Guide
The sanctuary of Apollo Smintheus — the Smintheion — lies in the town of Gülpınar in the Ayvacık district of Çanakkale and is counted among the most important sanctuaries of the late Hellenistic period in Anatolia. Its temple was built around 150 BC, and among the cults of Apollo in Anatolia it is the only one known by the symbol of the mouse: Apollo Smintheus means lord of mice, and the god worshipped here was the one who protected farmers from them.
The temple is Ionic, and it uses the pseudodipteral plan — a false double colonnade — associated with Hermogenes, the architect who left his mark on Hellenistic architecture in Anatolia. Eight columns stand across the front and back and fourteen down each long side. Its most remarkable feature is its sculpture: relief friezes whose subject is the Trojan War as told in Homer's Iliad, which the Ministry notes makes the building unique.
From the naos, the inner room, came a 110-centimetre fragment of a leg belonging to a statue of Apollo by the Parian sculptor Skopas. The statue appears on Hellenistic coins of Alexandria Troas and is mentioned in ancient sources; it is thought to have stood on the temple front, to have been perhaps five metres tall, and to have shown Apollo with his foot on a mouse. Life-size mouse sculptures made for the excavation directorate now stand on the temple steps, and the foot sculptures worked out from that reading of the statue are displayed on the museum terrace.
The sanctuary is more than its temple. It also holds the altar where sacrifices were made, a bridge and a sacred way built for the people who came to worship and visit, Roman baths for ritual cleansing and washing, the channels and reservoirs that fed them, streets lined with statues and inscriptions, a heroon, and houses. Minibuses running to Gülpınar serve it; the address is Gülpınar Köyü, Babakale Kavşağı No:1, Ayvacık.
