Kourion: the Italian Mission study of the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates

Between 2014 and 2018 an Italian mission studied the building known as the Palestra in the Sanctuary of Apollo Hylates at Kourion, and its director argues that it was the priests' house.¹ It was directed by Serenella Ensoli for the Italian Archaeological Mission of the Luigi Vanvitelli University in Cyprus, with the authorisation of the Department of Antiquities.¹ It belongs to the Ptolemaica Project, run since 2014 in Libya, Cyprus and "Ancient Palestine", which seeks to contextualise the Hellenistic Ptolemaic koine.¹ The mission set out to study a set of sanctuary buildings whose identification had until then been problematic, and investigated the Palestra through extensive graphic documentation rather than excavation.¹ Benches and the elevation of the building were reconstructed graphically, and the column heights of the peristyle were calculated to render the roof pitches.¹ A mission in 2016 included Marco Bianchini's observation of the plaster layers on the sacellum niches.¹

Ensoli argues that the building is the sanctuary's Domus of the Priests and not a palestra, from its off-centre position, its house-like plan and the rooms and benches around the peristyle.¹ Room B has been identified as a sacellum with the base of a cult statue on the back wall and an altar in front, room C as a hestiatorion with six klinai, and room A as an equipped kitchen with a cave for storing food.¹ The plan also includes a staircase (U) in the north-west corner linking the building to the upper sacred area and the Hospitalia, and a propylaeum (T) on the north side.¹ The monument is described as built between the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, with Hill's restorations in the 1950s; Ensoli argues for a Hellenistic original construction, kept through Roman refurbishments, on the evidence of the Ptolemaic foot (36.5 cm), the decorative style and the orientation.¹ She notes that Soren accepts Scranton's palestra dating and identifies a more ancient building beneath it.¹

The 0.64 m stone figurine of the Pallophoros from the sacellum is kept in the Episkopi Archaeological Museum; Ensoli reads it as the deified Alexander the Great.¹ Her article of 2023 presents the results of the 2014 to 2018 study and announces the full study, with surveys, reconstructions and a 3D rendering, in the series Ptolemaica. Studies about the Mediterranean.¹