Tegea Tourist Attractions
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At the little village of Tegéa, 8km/5mi southeast of Trípoli, is a sanctuary of Athena Alea.Tegéa, until 560 B.C. a center of resistance to Sparta, was described by Pausanias in the A.D. second century as a flourishing city, but in A.D. 395 was destroyed by Alaric. Later the Crusaders built the town of Nikli nearby.According to the myth Tegéa was founded by Aleos, whose daughter Auge conceived Telephos after being raped by Herakles. Telephos travelled to Mysia in Asia, defeated the Trojans at the river Kaikos before the Trojan War and was later revered by the royal house of Pergamon as their ancestor (frieze on Pergamon Altar).Tegéa was the birthplace of Atalanta, who received the skin of the Calydonian boar from Meleagros.
Temple of Athena
On the site of an earlier Archaic building at Tegea, destroyed by fire in 395 B.C., Skopas erected between 350 and 340 B.C. a new temple, which was decorated with his own sculpture. In this temple, the first in the Peloponnese entirely built of marble, Skopas retained the older elongated ground-plan with 6 x 14 columns. In the naos he departed from the regular practice of dividing it into three aisles by two rows of columns and instead set Corinthian half-columns against the interior walls so as to achieve an effect of space and magnificence. He thus carried a stage further the trend towards giving increased emphasis to the interior which Iktinos had begun in the Parthenon and continued at Bassai.On the east pediment was a representation of the hunt for the Calydonian boar, whose skin was preserved in the temple; the west pediment showed Telephos in the battle on the river Kaikos. Ramps at the east end and on the north side show that the temple could be entered either from the east or the north. The only surviving remains of the temple are the foundations and a few columns and capitals.The most impressive ruin is the fourth century B.C. Doric temple of Athena Aleá, which are the Peloponnese's second largest, after Olympia's Temple of Zeus.
Tegea Archaeological Museum
The Tegea Museum near the Temple of Athena at Tegai exhibits finds from the site. In the entrance hall is a marble throne from the ancient theater, in the left-hand room are elements from the temple and sculpture by Skopas, in the right-hand room a statue of Demeter, a head of Asklepios, a funerary stele and a Roman sarcophagus with a representation of Achilles and Hector at Troy; in the rear room are finds from Tegéa and Assia (bronzes, pottery, etc.).
