The Greek city of Corinth was founded in the Neolithic Period sometime between 5000-3000 BCE. It became a major city in the 8th century BCE and was known for its architectural and artistic innovations including the invention of black-figure pottery. One of the most famous style of ancient Greek vase painting, black-figure ware depicts human and animal forms in black silhouettes on a cream or red background. During this time, the Corinthians excavated the fountain grotto and embellished it with a six chambered structure.
In 146 BCE, the Corinthians were defeated by the Romans at the Battle of Corinth. Taking this victory as a starting point, Rome soon controlled all of Greece. Declaring Corinth the capital of Roman Greece in 44 BCE, Julius Caesar ordered his people to rebuild the city and its famous fountain. The Romans decorated the Fountain of Peirene lavishly, painting lively frescoes of aquatic life around the walls of the original Greek grotto and adding an elaborate facade in the 3rd century CE that is still in evidence today.
Around the year 400, as the Western Roman Empire was in sharp decline, Corinth came under the political control of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire centered in Constantinople. Subscribing to the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church, the Byzantines built a small chapel in one corner of the Fountain of Peirene in the late 10th century. By the 14th century, after years of neglect and earthquakes, the columns of the fountain had sunk into the ground.
Americans began excavating the Fountain of Peirene in 1896, digging through the many layers of later occupation to find the ancient Roman and Greek architecture beneath. Today, the Greek people view the Fountain of Peirene as a national treasure.
