File:Three annotated coastal topographical views of Cape Sounion (or Sunium - Colonna) with the 'Temple of Minerva' (Poseidon) RMG PU9392.jpg

English: Three annotated coastal topographical views of Cape Sounion [or Sunium / Colonna] with the 'Temple of Minerva' [Poseidon]

This carefully inscribed pencil drawing comprises four expert coastal profiles, of which the two main ones are of Cape Sounion seen from the south-west (top) and south-east (middle) with the offlying islet of Patroklou. At the bottom is a view from about west-north-west with the 'N[orth] end of Keos or Zea' -in fact Kea - to the right. Mends also did a sketchbook watercolour of Sounion from the south and east about the same time, see PAI0876.

Cape Sounion (or Sunium in Latin) is the southern point of the Attic peninsula, 43 km south of Athens. It is famous as site of the 5th-century BC Greek Temple of Poseidon, of which 18 of the 42 columns of the peristyle still stand and make a striking sea mark. Mends is not alone in mistakenly calling it the 'Temple of Minerva', since there is also such a temple on the site - or more strictly a Temple of Athena (the Greek name). Only its foundations remain, however, which are not distinguishable from the sea. Although today again called by its ancient name of Sounion, the headland was more usually called 'Cape Colonna' - 'column cape' - until well after Greece won independence from Turkey in the 1820s. This was the name given it by the Venetians, who colonized the Greek coast from the 15th century and held much of the country, including Athens, until they were evicted by westward expansion of the Ottoman empire in the mid-17th.

Three annotated coastal topographical views of Cape Sounion