Research had already shown that Naxos played a leading role in the development not only of sculpture but also of architecture. Yet the first steps in the creation of an lonic monumental style remained unknown. The second temple of Iria provides evidence as early as the 8th century B.C. for the first known monumental arrangement of the interior with a four-aisled hypostyle temple hall, astonishing for its time. The third temple provides first hand evidence for the existence of a wooden. prostyle portico, the fore-runner of the columnar facade of archaic temples. The fourth temple, datable to 580-550 B.C., provides the earliest example of Ionic prostyle temple in marble. It is at this temple that the, until recently, unknown primary steps of the monumental marble architecture are being documented, in the foundation of the facade and of the adyton, in the column's shape, in the impressive door-ways, in the shaping of the entablature and of the marble roof. Here are the architectural forms that prevailed throughout the course of ancient architecture, and still today are employed world-wide as an expression of the monumental.