The Sanctuary of Apollo, the holy of holies of the Aegean

Walk in along the Sacred Way between the South Stoa and the Stoa of Philip V. The second was given around 210 BC by Philip V of Macedon, and the dedication on its architrave says so plainly: an offering of Philip, king of the Macedonians, son of King Demetrios, to Apollo. Kings paid for marble here because every sailor in the Aegean would see it.

Then come the three temples. The oldest and smallest, the Porinos Naos of poros stone, is usually credited to the Athenians of the late 6th century BC, when the family of Pisistratus was tightening its grip on the island. The largest, the Temple of the Delians, was begun around 476 BC with the money of the Delian League. When Athens moved the League's treasure home in 454 BC, work stopped; the half-built temple sat under a makeshift roof for about 150 years and was taken up again only after 314 BC, when Delos was independent. It was never truly finished: its columns were fluted only at the top and bottom, as a guide for masons who never came back. Between the two, the Temple of the Athenians of about 425–420 BC was built in the Attic manner of the Parthenon and held seven statues on a semicircular base, hence its other name, the Temple of the Seven Statues.

To the west, the Naxians left their mark early. Around 600–575 BC they built their oikos, a long hall whose frame and roof were of marble, and towards the end of the 7th century BC they set up a kouros of Apollo some 9 m tall, cut from about 30 tonnes of marble from Melanes on Naxos. Its base is still in place, and on its back an inscription boasts that statue and base are 'the same stone'. Plutarch tells how it fell: the bronze palm tree that Nicias dedicated in the 5th century BC was torn loose by the wind, crashed into the colossus and overturned it. Its torso and hips now lie by the Artemision, a hand is in the Delos museum, and a foot ended up in the British Museum.

Near the temples stood the Keraton, the altar of horns, which Apollo was said to have built himself. Plutarch records that it was made only of horns taken from the left side of the head, and that Theseus, on his way home from Crete, danced the geranos, the 'crane dance', round it with the young Athenians he had saved from the Minotaur; the Delians were still dancing it centuries later. On the north side of the precinct, the Artemision of Apollo's twin sister was rebuilt three times on the same spot, and under it archaeologists found a deposit of Mycenaean treasures of gold, bronze and ivory, among them the plaque of a warrior in a boar's-tusk helmet that is now in the museum.