Cape Sounion

(Local Name: Soúnion) Altitude: 60m/200ft

Cape Soúnion, at the southeastern tip of Attica, is famed for the magnificent situation of its temple of Poseidon, perched on the edge of a precipitous crag.

Homer refers in the "Odyssey" (3, 278) to the "sacred cape" of Soúnion. In the seventh century B.C. there was probably a simple altar here; about 600 B.C. the large figures of kouroi now in the National Archeological Museum in Athens were set up beside it; and around 500 B.C. work began on the construction of a temple in poros limestone which was still unfinished when the Persians destroyed it in 480 B.C.

In the bay below the temple were boat-houses, of which some remains can still be