The Temple of Apollo is the heart of the sanctuary — the place where the Pythia delivered her prophecies and where kings and generals came to learn their fates. The current temple is the third on the site, built around 330 BC after the second was destroyed by earthquake; even this late version was restored and replicated as faithfully as the Greeks could manage. Six columns of the peristyle still stand, enough to give a strong sense of the building's scale and of its commanding position above the Sacred Way.
The inscriptions on the pronaos — "Know thyself" and "Nothing in excess" — were famous throughout the ancient world as summaries of Delphic wisdom. The temple was stripped of its treasures in Roman times (Sulla took much of its gold in 86 BC; Nero allegedly stole 500 statues), but what remains of the structure is enough. The view from the temple platform across the olive-covered valley of Phocis is as dramatic as anything in Greece.