The Temple of Artemis
Burned once for fame, and once for faith.
- EXISTED
- Rebuilt c. 550 BC, destroyed AD 401
- WHERE
- Ephesus, Asia Minor (modern Turkey)
- LOST
- AD 401
- CAUSE OF LOSS
- Arson, Gothic raids, and finally Christian demolition
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was so vast and so beautiful, a forest of more than a hundred marble columns, that the ancients counted it among the Seven Wonders, and one traveller wrote that, having seen it, he felt the other Wonders were placed in shadow. It was burned to the ground in 356 BC by a man named Herostratus, who confessed he had done it only so that his name would be remembered forever.
The Ephesians rebuilt it grander still, and it stood for centuries more, until it was plundered by raiding Goths and at last dismantled in late antiquity as the old gods gave way to the new faith. Its stones were scattered into other walls across the world. Where one of the greatest buildings of antiquity stood, there is now a marsh, and one lonely column reassembled from fragments.
Its marble was carried off for other buildings; some is said to lie within the Hagia Sophia. Today a single reassembled column stands in a marsh, storks nesting on its top, to mark where a Wonder of the World once stood.