Primer on Ancient Greek Temples

From left to right: Mycenaean style clay brick temple, early archaic stone slab temple, late archaic peri-style temple, and lastly a classical peri-style temple. Almost all temple entrances face East and the sunrise. A temple becomes peri-style when columns are placed around its periphery. It becomes in-antis when it has more than one room.

Below is the very famous Temple to Poseidon at Sounion which they are pretty sure was built by the same architect that built the Hephaestion or Thission in the precincts of Athens ancient Agora. The difference here, besides it being in a lot worse shape, is that the columns had fewer flutes to lessen erosion from the near by sea. Also this temple has a lot of carved graffiti defacing it from people like Lord Byron and other tourists.

Below left is a small temple on the Acropolis in Athens, its famous too and is called the Temple of Athena Nike. Next to it is the Erecthion and the famous Caryatides in the left hand corner.