The Temple of Artémis to Éphèse (in Greek: Ἀρτεμίσιον Artemision , in Latin: Artemisium), known also under the less exact denomination of temple of Diane , was the fourth of the seven wonders of the world. Its construction began in -560 and finished in -440. Its architects are Theodore de Samos, Ctésiphon and Metagenès.

Artémis is the Greek goddess of chastity and hunting.

The ruins of Éphèse are today close to the Turkish city of Selçuk, with fifty kilometers in the south of Izmir.

This temple is also regarded as being the first bank in the world because it was possible there to deposit money and to recover it later credited with an interest.

Destruction and restoration

The temple was burnt on July 21st -356 by Érostrate, which wanted to be thus made famous. Learning the mobile from the flamer which had destroyed the temple which made the desire of all the Greeks, the magistrates of the city made it torture and kill. It was prohibited that its name is pronounced under penalty of death. This stop was not respected which 23 years, until the arrival of Alexandre Large the, which financed the restoration of the temple and entrusted work to the architect Dinocratès (restoration who was completed tardily more than two centuries later). But when Éphésiens learned the birth date from their benefactor (the same year and, it seems, the same night as that of the fatal fire), the name was revealed.

Final destruction

Deprived of some of its works of art most famous for Néron, plundered by a forwarding of Goths come from the Black Sea towards 262, damaged by earthquakes, the temple was definitively closed, like the other pagan temples, by the general edict of Théodose in 381, and was transformed into quarry stone cut.

The temple is quoted in the Acts of the Apostles (: 23-40) in particular for the riot that there started the preaching of Paul de Tarse.

Simple: Temple off Artemis