Temples where traditionally places of worship.. but also of rememberance. They where build often large and high for one to look up into the sealing and feel small. Mountaintop structures, also known as acropolia, where often chosen due to strategic benefits as well as for faith related significances. Because these structures, particulary in ancient times, where very expensive to build, it more often than not had a double function; religious and military. This is still obvious today with for example church stair cases. The clockwise rotation is beneficial to defend with a sword from people coming from below.. due to the defender his sword hand being right, and counter clockwise giving more space to the hands. This is often not known about temples and churches..
In regard to levels below.. usually a crypt. These are commonly one or two layers. More often than not one.. Some temples, particulary in citadels or cities in general, do have multiple layers, particulary if where build over one another. This was common practice in ancient times since people did not have heavy equipment to move building blocks, and usually it was cheaper to strip buildings where possible and dump sand over it, effectively burying the structure, allowing it to be less prone to aquatic inundation of a river, and in these cases layers below temples are usually one to three layers deep, some more, most less.. It is really depenend on the type of city and its local history, wars, and other events.
Colors have significance in cultural and religious aspects. But sometimes colors where also hard to come by in ancient times, and in certain cases the light interval had to be taken into account. Buildings often use colors to be visible, and historically speaking these where not that different in reasoning than modern day people. If wanting to have spesifics for colors regarding for example the building style of Europe, I would recommend reading some stuff on heraldic colors, since these where the building blocks of medieval Europe and heavily influenced European building styles and their color usage.. In regard to mordern day color usage I would recommend the Sagrada Família, its color pattern was chosen to melt in with the sunlight and the position of the sun spesifically. If observing its stain windows you may notice it. 😇
