You keep following the designated route up the length of Adrianou street, walking along the perimeter of the Ancient Agora. You turn left, following Ag. Asomaton street, passing the train station of Thiseion, and cutting through the Agora. Your footsteps bring you to Apostolou Pavlou street, all the while circling the agora. To your left, the Temple of Hephaestus stands proud amidst the ruins. Initially, it was believed that the temple was dedicated to Theseus, the hero of the city, until historical sources proved that it was in fact dedicated to the gods Athena and Hephaestus, protectors of craftsmen.
Hephaestus can be described as one of the less graceful gods in the Ancient Greek dodekatheon, the pantheon of the twelve major gods. A child of Zeus and Hera, he is reported to have had misshapen legs from birth, with a different story claiming that one of his parents threw him from Mt. Olympus in a fit of rage. He wasn't the luckiest of gods, apparently, and good parenting seemed to be a skill that the gods, for all their godliness, lacked. Hephaestus is the patron god of craftsmen and blacksmiths. In his divine forgery the element of fire was kept. Hephaestus is extremely skilled in his trade, and very clever and inventive. He is also claimed to possess the power of giving motion to non-living things, such as statues. But Hephaestus is also shown to have a vengeful streak, though not a cruel one. His vengeance is satirical and ridicules those who have wronged him. In one story, for example, after finding out that his wife Aphrodite was having an affair with the war god Ares, he captures them in the act with an unbreakable, invisible net and brings them to the rest of the gods as they are humiliated.
The temple erected in his honor, which is shared with Athena, is estimated to have begun being constructed before the Parthenon, by one of the same architects as the Parthenon, Kallikrates. As Pericles rose to power and strived to turn Athens into an awe-worthy place of worship and prestige, the Hephaisteion's construction was halted to make way for the great work that was the Parthenon. The temple was officially finished in the late 5th century BCE. It remains as oe of the best preserved temple of antiquity to this day, standing as it was built, and having had to undergo comparatively fewer reconstructive and preservative processes.
At some point during the 7th century AD, the temple was turned into a Christian orthodox church, the church of St. George Akamates. In the19th century, after the Independence War against the Ottoman Empire, the first king of Greece, Otto, ordered the temple to be used as a museum, and so it was used for 100 years, until its archaeological value prevailed and further research begun.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hephaistos_Temple.JPG
