Kallichoron Well

According to the myth the goddess Demeter when she arrived at Eleusis, after her wanderings for days in search of her daughter Persephone, sat down to rest close to a well, the so-called Kallichoron well. As the traveller Pausanias mentions, there were performed by the maidens of Eleusis, dances, which formed part of the sacred rites in honour of the goddess.

The structure is dated to the end of the 6^th – beginning of the 5^th cent. BC.  Today it is not fully visible because of later buildings that were erected during the redesigning of the entrance to the Sanctuary in Roman times (2^nd cent. AD).

The depth of the well today is 6m. Its inner side has a neatly constructed stone lining in the polygonal system of masonry. Its mouth consists of two concentric rings made of grey-blue eleusinian stone. It is the «well of the fair dances», as the excavator D. Philios in 1892 characteristically stated. The stone blocks were joined together by metal clamps in the shape of double Τ.

Of the two mouth rings the lower one had a dual function, serving as step to stand on and draw water, but also as seat where from probably the maidens chanted hymns to the goddess.

Around the well there is an area paved with poros slabs. The entire space was enclosed by a high apsidal wall, its base of poros and superstructure of mudbricks, with three entrances that were possibly associated with the performance of rituals. The wall, perhaps in 297 BC, in the time of Demetrius Poliorcetes («The Sieger of Cities»), was converted into a low parapet, while it was finally destroyed in the  3^rd cent. AD.

West Triumphal Arch The Greater Propylaea