... is more correctly known as the Temple of Artemis, or the Artemisium. It was built by Croesus, king of Lydia, in about 550 BC, and dedicated to an ancient, local form of the goddess Artemis (with whom the Roman goddess Diana was associated). Ephesus is near the modern town of Selçuk in present–day Turkey. The temple was rebuilt after being burned by a madman named Herostratus in 356 BC, but after being destroyed by invading Goths in AD 262 it was never rebuilt.
The Artemesium was famous not only for its great size – over 350 by 180 feet – but also for the magnificent works of art that adorned it. Little remains of it today, although there are many fragments, especially of sculptured columns, in the British Museum. Excavation has revealed traces of both Croesus's original temple and the 4th–century reconstruction, and of three earlier smaller ones. A model at a 'miniature park' in Istanbul, opened in 2003, attempts to recreate the probable appearance of the third temple.
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