Segesta, Santuario di Contrada Mango. Il cantiere del tempio: dalla progettazione alla costruzione

The review of old finds and excavation data from the peri-urban sanctuary of Contrada Mango at Segesta offers new insights into the reconstruction of building activities in an Elymian sanctuary, active as early as the Archaic period, which in the mid-fifth century BC was equipped with a magniloquent Greek-type temple building (peripteros) within a monumental peri- bolos. The extraordinary discovery of some fragments of the temple’s paradeigma, as well as some elements of the entablature, roofing and architectural decorations, and fragments of Parian marble sculptures, document a close dialogue between workers and patronage and reveal aspects of the organisation and operational practice on the site, the result of intense contacts not only with the Greek colony of Selinunte but also with itinerant Parian artists, which placed the Elymian centre in an international commis- sioning circuit, on a par with the richest Greek colonies in the West. The construction of the temple building was part of a pro- found transformation of the city’s physiognomy, initiated between the end of the 6th and the beginning of the 5th century, with the building of the fortification walls, and completed between the mid-5th century, with the construction of the temple of Mango, and the end of the same century, with the building of the second segestan peripteral Temple, on the western hill. The subsequent spoli- ation of the first temple building, by then in disuse, in the Roman or post-Antique period, opened a new building site activity in the Segestan sanctuary, also documented with interesting evidence.