Sanctuary of Aphrodite Urania

This sanctuary initially consisted of a marble altar that was built around 500 BC and was gradually buried as the ground level rose.

This structure fell into ruin in turn in the 6th or 7th centuries AD, after which the area was covered over by Byzantine housing.

Among the Athenians the cult was established by Aegeus, who thought that he was childless (he had, in fact, no children at the time) and that his sisters had suffered their misfortune because of the wrath of Aphrodite Urania.

The east boundary of the sanctuary was formed by a narrow north-south street, which separated it from the Stoa Poikile.

To the west, was a poros water channel in the Classical period and then the Early Roman Stoa, which ran along the Panathenaic Way in a northwesterly direction towards the Dipylon Gate.

S 3344) found nearby shows a veiled woman climbing down a ladder and holding out an incense burner - the iconography of Aphrodite Urania.

The superstructure was offset to the east, so that there was a 0.58 metre wide space on the western side, where the priest would stand, in order to make sacrifices on the altar.

[10] There were marble barriers at the northern and southern ends of the altar, each consisting of a triangular pediment topped by a palmette acroterion, which was originally painted.

[12] This is supported by the low ground level of the structure - 0.32 metres below that of the mid-fifth century BC Stoa Poikile.

[17] The goat bones are predominantly from the back and pelvis (70%), with smaller proportions from the hind-limbs (25%) and even less from the fore limbs (4%).

[19] To the west of the altar in the Classical period was a platform made of poros blocks with marble steps on the east and south sides measuring 7.00 metres from north to south and over 7.70 metres from east to west (the western end was not uncovered in excavations).

[23] Two fragments from the superstructure were found nearby: the top of an Ionic column shaft with an anthemion moulding (inv.

[22] Ceramics in this layer of fill show that these earthworks (and the temple) date to the first half of the first century AD.

[30] The cross-wall and east wall of the temple were demolished and rebuilt with rubble masonry atop a foundation of field stones early in the 3rd century AD.

[32] The temple fell into ruins sometime before the beginning of the fifth century, when its remains were incorporated into a massive concrete platform.

[35] Underneath this were three graves of the eleventh century BC: a Sub-Mycenean amphora containing the cremated bones of a male teenager (inv.

[34] In 1939, the American excavators of the Athenian Agora identified the sanctuary for Aphrodite Urania with remains of a building found on the north side of the Kolonos Agoraios, which were damaged by the Athens-Piraeus railway.

[39] This was disproven when the remains of the sanctuary were discovered by new American excavations in the northwestern corner of the Agora at 13 Hadrianou Street, which took place between 1980-1982 and 1989-1993 under the leadership of T. Leslie Shear, Jr. [de].

[42] Osanna and Robertson have questioned the identification of these remains with the sanctuary of Aphrodite, preferring to identify them with the statue of Hermes Agoraios mentioned by Pausanias right before he discusses the Stoa Poikile.