Spartia Temple

The Spartia Temple is an ancient Greek sanctuary at the foot of Spartia hill, north of Sesklo in the Magnesia region of Thessaly. A bronze omphalos phiale bearing an archaic inscription dedicated by Tilephilos to Heracles confirmed the site as the only excavated sanctuary of Heracles worship outside a city in the region of ancient Pherae. Discovered during natural gas pipeline construction in 1999, the site yielded bronze vases, weapons, figurines, black-figured roof tiles, and a Hellenistic phase built atop the earlier archaic sanctuary. Finds span from the Archaic through Byzantine periods.