Didima

Didyma was the oracle sanctuary of Apollo in the territory of Miletus on the Ionian coast, where a priestess spoke over a sacred spring and the priestly family of the Branchidae interpreted her words. The Persians burned the temple after the battle of Lade in 494 BC and carried its bronze Apollo to Ecbatana; the site lay in ruins until Alexander freed Miletus in 334 BC.

The Milesians raised a vast Ionic temple with an open court; Seleucus I brought the statue back from Persia around 300 BC. Galatian raiders sacked the sanctuary in 277 BC, and pirates in 67 BC, yet Roman emperors patronised it; Hadrian came as prophet in 129 AD.

The oracle ended when Theodosius I closed the pagan temples; a Byzantine bishopric and village lingered on the site until an earthquake in 1493 toppled the temple and drove the inhabitants away.