Excavations at Delphi
Over the course of the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the sanctuary of Apollo was absorbed into the urban Roman settlement that grew on the abandoned precinct, centred around an agora as the commercial hub.
[2] In the second half of the 6th century, the area of Delphi began to depopulate with the abandonment of houses, cisterns, and the surrounding countryside, possibly as a consequence of the Justinian plague.
After Cyriacus, English architects James "Athenian" Stuart and Nicholas Revett visited Delphi in 1751, shortly after the uncovering of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
[5] Their investigations found part of the enormous wall that supported the temple's terrace, covered in inscription, the stones of which were so large they were unable to move them.
Yet, although the site of ancient Delphi had been securely identified, it was very difficult to start a systematic excavation, as the expropriation of an entire village was almost impossible given the meager finances of the newly founded Greek state.
The technical teams provided the site with a Decauville railway with V skip wagonets, in order to remove the debris, and started demolishing the old houses.
One of the most exciting moments was the discovery of the Charioteer, part of the monumental bronze sculpture dedicated by the tyrant of Gela, Polyzalos, in order to commemorate his victory at the Pythian Games.
Other highlights of the excavations were the discovery of the Dancers of Delphi as well as of the Roman statue of Antinous and of the pair of archaic kouroi (Dioskouroi or Kleobis and Biton).
[8] In the course of the next thirty years several prominent Greek and foreign archaeologists and researchers worked at Delphi: Keramopoulos, Meliadis and Romaeos, Van Effenterre, Jannoray, Georges Daux and the nobleman Pierre de La Coste-Messelière counted among them.
The new museographic approach was the result of the collaboration of the Ephore of Antiquities of Delphi Ioanna Konstantinou and of Christos Karouzos, director of the National Archaeological Museum.
The new Delphi Museum opened its gates in 1961, at the time when the economic and cultural regeneration of Greece started bringing loads of foreign tourists to the site.
As Rozina Kolonia, former Ephor of Antiquities of Delphi, notes in the guidebook of the museum, the exhibits are displayed in a way that they "compose a historical novel, the pages of which run across twelve centuries of history and archaeology: they narrate through museography the political, religious and artistic activity of the most renowned sanctuary of paganism and of its oracle.
