When he first looked upon the world and wondered how best it should be ordered, Zeus released the Eagles of East and West, bidding each to fly around the Earth in his own direction.

The birds were reunited at this place and Zeus set down a sacred white stone, to mark it forever as the centre of the planet. The first shrine was created around this stone and from that moment onward, Zeus’s son Apollo, keeper of the sun, began relaying the will of his father to those who came here.

She stands within the fourth Apollonian Temple to have been built here, which has undergone extensive and ongoing repair works following the War that almost destroyed it.

The first Temple was much smaller than the present building and constructed from branches of Thessaly’s sacred laurel trees, while the next was created by bees of wax and feathers, designed to bridge the gap between Earth and the underworld.

Bees make the journey to and from Hades as a matter of course and the secrets they retrieve therein are for the golden ears of Apollo and his twin sister Artemis, the virgin huntress, keeper of the moon.

The third temple was a great bronze edifice, which stood for many years before the heat of the Sun God melted it back into the Earth. The fourth was built before she took up her office and the fifth shall be put on its foundations when she has left for the Elysium Fields.