The Temple of Ceres stands some 400 metres north of the other two temples, separated by open ground, and it has a different feel. It is slightly smaller than the Temple of Neptune and was built around 510 BC — transitional in style, somewhere between the Archaic heaviness of the Basilica and the composed classicism of the later temple. Thirty-four columns survive in various states of completeness. The building faces east, as Greek temples typically did, toward the mountains and the rising sun.
Early travellers named it the Temple of Ceres (the Roman grain goddess), which seemed to fit a fertile agricultural plain. It was almost certainly dedicated to Athena. What makes this temple unusual in its later history is the evidence of Christian use: in the early medieval period it served as a church, and that reuse may have contributed to its survival through the centuries when the rest of the city was being forgotten. The ground here was never quite abandoned.