Even in the most sacred of sites, there are dozens – even hundreds – of men and woman (and children) who are employed in or near the Temples and who provide the daily services upon which the temples are based. And those men, women (and children!) require all the services of normal people – a market for food, shepherds to herd the flocks, musicians for ceremonies, women to clean and polish, merchants to sell souvenirs, vintners to provide both sacred and profane wines, artists to create, architects and their staffs to design, masons to build, soldiers to guard the treasuries, taverns for them all to eat, drink and play (plus the tavern owners, the barmaids, and the prostitutes); a whole living field of humans whose living derived all or in part from living just down the mountain from the sacred sites of Delphi.

Welcome to Delphi Village, where the profane is even more popular than the holy. This is where the real Hellenes live.

• Oldest Hymn to Apollo by Kallistos Alexandros

• Apollo at Delphi: The Python, Omphalos & Tripod by Dionysia Xanthippos