ArchaeologicalSiteofBrauron

You are standing in the sanctuary of Artemis of Brauron. Tradition says that Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, and her brother Orestes brought the goddess's statue here from the land of the Taurians. In Euripides, Athena tells Iphigenia that she will keep the keys of the goddess here, be buried here, and receive the fine robes of women who died in childbirth. Her tomb was honoured in a cave on the rocky slope, whose roof fell in long ago.

Before you lies the great stoa, built around 420 BC and partly restored in modern times. Its stone bases once carried statues of children offered to the goddess. Girls before puberty took part in a secret rite in her honour and were called little bears. A grand procession came from the Acropolis of Athens for her festival, the Brauronia. Around 300 BC a great storm buried the sanctuary in mud, and it stayed hidden until excavations began in 1948.