The building in which this fire was kept was the Prytaneum, and the chieftain (the king or prytanis)probably made it his residence.
Rulers of this name are found at Rhodes as late as the 1st century B.C. The Prytaneum was regarded as the religious and political centre of the community and was thus the nucleus of all government, and the official "home" of the whole people.
This site of the Prytaneum at Athens cannot be definitely fixed; it is generally supposed that in the course of time several buildings bore the name.
The Prytaneum, mentioned by Pausanias, and probably the original centre of the ancient city, was situated somewhere east of the northern cliff of the Acropolis.
Curtius places the original Prytaneum south of the Acropolis in the Old Agora, speaks of a second identical with the Tholos in the Cerameicus, and regards that of Pausanius as a building of Roman times (Stadtgeschichte, p. 302).