The Artemis temple held the statue of this goddess, that had fallen from the sky and thus could not be t0ouched. It was of dark wood and each morning a curtain would be drawn that had hidden the goddess during the night, so she could see what gifts had been brought by her visitors. The temple was one of the Seven Wonders of the World. The great temple was built by Croesus, king of Lydia, in about 550 BC and was rebuilt after being burned by a madman named Herostratus in 356 BC. The Artemesium was famous not only for its great size (over 350 by 180 feet [about 110 by 55 m]) but also for the magnificent works of art that adorned it. The temple was destroyed by invading Goths in AD 262 and was never rebuilt. Little remains of the temple (though there are many fragments, especially of sculptured columns, in the British Museum), but excavation has revealed traces of both Croesus' and the 4th-century temple and of three earlier, smaller ones (part of this text from Enc. Britt.).