Qualla: Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas

Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Schuppi, CC BY-SA 4.0. The healing that made Epidaurus famous did not begin at the great sanctuary in the valley. It began up here, on the summit of Mount Kynortion, where people had been leaving offerings at an open-air altar long before Asclepius had a temple of his own. The Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas is the older and less-visited of the two sacred sites above ancient Epidaurus — the one that Pausanias, writing in the 2nd century AD, said was ancient even then. It sits on a low hilltop east of the Asclepieion, and the mythology of the whole healing complex is threaded through it: this was believed to be the very hill where the infant Asclepius was exposed after birth, nursed by a goat, and discovered. Apollo and Asclepius begin here together.

Image: Schuppi | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas: Fire and Ash Before the Temples

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Schuppi, CC BY-SA 4.0. At the peak of Mount Kynortion there was once a small Early Helladic settlement, occupied in the third millennium BC. The settlers left, and later generations chose not to build over the site. Instead, sometime at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age — roughly the same era when t...

Image: Schuppi | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas: What Pausanias Saw

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mark Landon, CC BY 4.0. By the 4th century BC, a proper sanctuary had taken shape: a small Doric temple of Apollo, an altar, a stoa, a shrine of the Muses, and living quarters for the sanctuary staff. These were the structures visible when the site flourished. Then came the first century BC, a period of...

Image: Mark Landon | CC BY 4.0

Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas: The Last of the Pagan Shrines

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Schuppi, CC BY-SA 4.0. The sanctuary could not have remained active past the 4th or 5th century AD. The Christian emperors issued successive edicts shutting down pagan cult sites, and the temples at Epidaurus — including this hilltop shrine — fell silent along with the rest. The structures themselves w...

Image: Schuppi | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas: The Hilltop Above the Famous Place

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Schuppi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Visiting the Sanctuary of Apollo Maleatas today means climbing past the crowds that fill the Asclepieion below. The theatre at Epidaurus draws tens of thousands of visitors each summer — its acoustics are justly celebrated, and modern performances still fill the ancient stone sea...

Image: Schuppi | CC BY-SA 4.0