Internet Archaeol. 14 Kaiser.The Sanctuary of Askepios

5.1 The Sanctuary of Asklepios

Figure 8: View of the Sanctuary of Asklepios from the south plaza. The statue in the background is a copy of the original statue of Asklepios re-erected in its temple.

The temples in only one precinct at Empúries, those in the sanctuary of the healing god Asklepios (Fig. 8), may have had the possibility of being seen from afar. Standing on a hill buttressed by an artificial terrace, the sanctuary stood above the adjoining southern plaza and all of the surrounding structures (see Fig. 6). The terrace was reached via a stairway that rose more than two metres from the level of the plaza below. The structures in the precinct went through a complex building history, the last stage of which occurred in the Augustan period when one of the Greek-era temples was replaced by a newer, larger, Roman-style temple (Mar and Ruiz 1993, 171-83; Sanmartí et al. 1988; 1989). It is unclear to whom this temple was dedicated. The temple faced east, was constructed on a podium, was prostyle and tetrastyle, and had a pronaos that led to the cella where the image of the deity was kept, a plan identical to numerous other contemporary Roman temples in Rome itself and the rest of Italy (Puig i Cadafalch 1911-1912). It was designed and constructed at about the same time Vitruvius was writing and quite clearly draws on the same architectural tradition (Mar and Ruiz 1993, 179).