Ramnous is located (A10 on the map) a few kilometers north of Marathon, in Attica, Greece. The area was named after a plant (ramnos in Greek) which can be found in the region. The most important archaeological remains in Ramnous dating back to the 5th and the 4th c. BCE are the ancient fortress and the thousands of fragments from the temple of goddess Nemesis. For a long time Ramnous has been considered one of the many minor archaeological sites in Attica. The present Greek government, though, decided in August 1997 to show more actively its concern about this and other long abandoned, from a bureaucratic point of view, archaeological sites in Greece and the prime minister Mr. Simitis himself visited Ramnous.

The fortress of Ramnous is one of the very few strongholds of the 5th c. BCE that has been preserved so well down to our days. The surrounding wall is about 800 m. long and the fortress could accommodate 600-700 soldiers. The garrison's function was to protect the now buried port of Ramnous from pirates who stationed on the opposite small islands of the Euboic Gulf and waited to attack the vessels sailing to and from Ramnous. The fortress included a number of buildings for the accommodation of its defenders, a small agora and Dionysus altar, the area of which also served as a small theater. The soldiers lived four or five together in small 2,5 by 3,5 m. or 3,3 by 4 m. rooms, had to cook their own food and used rain water because there was no fountain. The small complex at Ramnous is in need of immediate restoration and, according to the archaeologist in charge Dr. B. Petrakos, a sum of 500 million Drs. (about US$1.8 million) has to be spent in the next five years for its preservation.

The other interesting archaeological remains at Ramnous is the temple of goddess Nemesis which was originally located about 500 m. south of the fortress. The first temple at Ramnous was built in the 6th c. and after its destruction three more followed on the same spot till the mid 5th c. Dr. Petrakos and his team have managed to reconstruct the entablature (upper part) of the last temple piece by piece in the site's warehouse, where findings are kept and protected from weather. The team introduced to Greek archaeology a very ingenious method of reconstruction in the case of that temple: they did not use any permanent material to keep the various fragments together but most of them are just placed where they most probably belong so that at any given moment new fragments that may be found can be attached to the existing ones. The temple is believed to have been designed by the same unknown architect who built the temple of Poseidon at Sounion (Attica) and the Hephaisteion (known as Theseion) at Athens. The building had 6 by 12 columns and measured 21.4 by 10.05 m. but only the six columns of the facade are somehow well preserved and can be seen in the warehouse. The temple of Nemesis is also interesting because parts of it were actually left unfinished in ancient times and the present restoration will help the archaeologists understand the various construction phases of Greek temples.

In the same warehouse the archaeologists brought a number of funerary temple-shaped gravestones called (periboloi) that had been erected on both sides of the road leading to the temple of Nemesis and the fortress. They commemorated the deceased inhabitants of the ancient village of Ramnous and were usually placed in front of their estates. The peribolos of the family of Hierokles measured between 15.26 by 3.12 or 4.56 m and has been restored out of hundreds of small fragments. Another beautiful peribolos is that of the Diogeiton's family that was made of marble and measures 6.5 by 4.16 m.

A small perivolos
Ramnous has been visited by many Greeks and tourists because of its nice beach but very few showed any interest to the archaeological site itself. It is hoped that the building of a museum for the findings to be exhibited properly, the preservation of the fortress and the publication of a guide for the visitors will renew the interest for the archaeological site of Ramnous.

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