APOLLO
The Didymaion was the third and largest temple that the Greeks built around the site of a natural spring, which they believed to be the source of the oracle’s prophetic power.
The Temple’s design took inspiration from the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus and the Temple of Hera on Samos, work of the renowned architects Paionius of Ephesus and Daphins of Miletus.
The original temple was destroyed in 494 BC by Darius 1. of Persia who stole its vast treasury and removed the statues. The Milesians began constucting a new Hellenistic temple of the site of the earlier shrine in 313 BC, after Alexander the Great had conquered Miletus, and the temple quickly regained its importance and this is the temple that you see today.