[1] Modern scholars such as A. W. Lawrence are doubtful about this, as though the Doric order used is "extremely similar" to that of the Parthenon, where they differ Bassae is "old-fashioned", yet it was probably built later.

Depictions by artists, which begin in the early 19th century, show the pteron or external colonnade standing complete, and the architrave nearly so.

The internal walls were a mass of fallen blocks, but relatively few had been removed for reuse, the normal fate of these conveniently sized pieces.

The temple is of a relatively modest size, with the stylobate measuring 38.3 by 14.5 metres[8] containing a Doric peristyle of six by fifteen columns (hexastyle).

The temple was constructed entirely out of grey Arcadian limestone[9] except for the Bassae Frieze which was carved from marble (probably in ancient times colored with paint).

[10][11] The temple is unusual in that it has examples of all three of the classical orders used in ancient Greek architecture: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian.

Cockerell decorated the walls of the Ashmolean Museum's Great Staircase and that of the Travellers Club with plaster casts of the same frieze.

[16] The temple had been noticed first in November 1765 by the French architect J. Bocher, who was building villas at Zante and came upon it quite by accident; he recognized it from its site, but when he returned for a second look, he was murdered by bandits.

They had been given permission to explore by Veli Pasha, the Ottoman governor of the Peloponnese, who was bribed to relinquish his claim on the finds, and the frieze was bought at auction by the British Museum in 1815.

Due to its distance from major metropolitan areas it also has less of a problem with acid rain which quickly dissolves limestone and damages marble carvings.