The Terrace of the Lions, the guardians of the lake

The lions were a Naxian statement. In the late 7th century BC Naxos was the great power of the central Cyclades, and it lined the way to Apollo's lake with a pride of marble beasts, perhaps nine or more of them, carved from island marble. Time scattered them. One is in Venice: carried off in 1716, it has guarded the land gate of the Arsenale ever since, with a new head carved for it there. The survivors were moved into the museum for protection, and in their place on the terrace stand copies that keep the line unbroken for the photographs.

They look out over the Sacred Lake, where, in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, Leto finally gave birth after Hera had forbidden every land to receive her: only drifting Delos dared, and the goddess threw her arms round a palm tree and knelt on the soft meadow. The lake was a marshy, oval pool, the home of Apollo's swans and geese. In the modern era it was a breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, so it was drained and is now kept dry; the palm tree in it today was planted to recall the story.

Beside the lions is the Letoon, a small temple of about 540 BC to Leto herself, and behind it the vast Agora of the Italians, a colonnaded court of about 200 by 80 m paid for in the late 2nd century BC by Italian merchants and bankers, among them Philostratos of Ascalon. It was wrecked in the sack of 88 BC, a reminder of how the money of the free port ended.