The Temple of Demeter stands on a low ridge in the agricultural heart of Naxos, about 10 kilometres south of Hora near the village of Ano Sangri. Built around 530 BC from local Naxian marble, it is one of the best-preserved Archaic temples in the Cyclades and was extensively restored in the late 20th century using original stone fragments recovered from the ruins of a Byzantine church that had been built over and partially from the temple itself.
The restoration is unusually successful: you can see clearly how the building worked — the column drums, the decorated entablature, the stepped platform — without the reconstruction obscuring what is original and what is not. The marble used throughout has the fine-grained, slightly translucent quality that made Naxian stone the most prized building material in the archaic Greek world. In the right light (late afternoon is best), the walls seem to glow from within.
The small museum beside the temple is worth the extra fifteen minutes. It explains the archaeological work and holds finds from the site and surrounding area, including architectural fragments, terracotta votives, and objects that give a sense of the religious practice that centred on this place for centuries. Demeter, goddess of grain and harvest, was the appropriate deity for this fertile agricultural plateau; the temple's position on the ridge would have been visible from the surrounding fields.
The site is freely accessible during daylight hours; the museum has standard Greek archaeological site hours. Combine the visit with a drive through the Tragea valley below — the old Venetian villages of Halki and Filoti are nearby, and the landscape of terraced olive groves and ancient stone walls along the road is worth seeing slowly.