Telesterion

The Telesterion was the initiation hall at Eleusis in Attica, the centre of the Eleusinian Mysteries held in honour of Demeter and Persephone. A hall stood on the site by the seventh century BC, and each year the nine-day festival brought thousands of initiates, who were shown sacred relics and forbidden to reveal what they had seen.

The Persians burned the building in 480 BC; it was rebuilt under Pericles from a design by Iktinos, the architect of the Parthenon, and Philon added a Doric portico around 318 BC. Sacked by the Costoboci in 170 AD, it was rebuilt on a larger scale by Marcus Aurelius, the only layman admitted to its innermost shrine.

The emperor Theodosius I closed the mysteries in 392, and in 396 the Goths of Alaric sacked Eleusis and destroyed the Telesterion, which was never rebuilt.