Excavations under the Athena terrace turned up Mycenaean figurines from a cult site that predates the Greeks themselves, possibly dedicated to Gaia, the Earth. By the 7th century BC something monumental was rising on top of that older shrine. Temple A was made of grey-shaded porous stone and is among the candidates for the earliest Doric temple anywhere in Greece. Twelve of its columns survived along with the foundation steps. The capitals were low, the flutings shallow, the proportions experimental. Then, sometime in the first half of the 6th century, an earthquake brought it down. Earthquakes never stopped being part of the story at Delphi. The mountain that gave the oracle its dramatic setting also kept rearranging the buildings.

Around 510 BC, Temple B went up on the same spot. The Alcmaeonid family, an aristocratic Athenian clan in exile, was funding a building program that would reshape Delphi, hoping to win Apollo's favor and a return to power. The new temple was 13.25 meters by 27.46 meters, with twelve columns on the long sides and six on the short. Its metopes were terracotta, painted with figures. Athena stood on the pediment, and Nike, the winged spirit of victory, perched on the side acroteria as if about to leap into flight. Fifteen of the columns were still standing in 1905, when a rockfall came down off Parnassus and smashed them. Scholars now think this temple may never have been formally abandoned, even after a third temple was built. People kept worshipping where they had always worshipped.

Pausanias, walking through Delphi in the 2nd century AD, recorded what was inside the temple in his time. Two statues of Athena flanked the entrance, the larger one a bronze offering from the people of Massalia, the Greek colony that became modern Marseilles. Inside hung a gold shield, dedicated by Croesus, the legendarily wealthy king of Lydia. Croesus had famously consulted the Delphic oracle before going to war with Persia and was told that if he attacked, a great empire would fall. He attacked. The empire that fell was his own. The gold shield he gave to Athena was, according to the Delphians, later stolen by Philomelos during the Third Sacred War in the 4th century BC. Even sacred precincts were not safe when armies needed bullion.

Around 360 BC a third temple was raised at the western end of the Marmaria terrace. Only the foundations remain, but the plan has been fully reconstructed: a stepped platform, six columns across the facade in a porch with side walls extending forward, a vestibule, and a cella with statues arrayed along the rear wall. There was almost no sculpted decoration. Architects think this was deliberate, a contrast to the lavishly decorated tholos a few decades older nearby. Restraint, in a place known for its drama. By the late 4th or early 5th century AD, all of it was closed. The persecution of pagans under the Christian emperors ended fifteen hundred years of worship at this terrace, and the temples slid back into stone.

The Marmaria is the lower sanctuary at Delphi, off the main archaeological path, and it tends to be quieter than the Temple of Apollo upslope. Visitors descend a path through olive trees to reach it. The foundations of all three Athena temples are visible at once, layered against each other on the same terrace. Three Doric column drums and a fragment of architrave from the famous tholos still stand nearby, a postcard image known worldwide. Above, the gray cliffs of the Phaedriades catch afternoon light. The valley falls away toward the Pleistos river and, farther down, the bay of Itea. From this terrace, looking toward the sea, you can understand why the ancient Greeks placed Apollo's voice here.