Olympia
Olympia sits in the western Peloponnese, a long way from anywhere most travellers begin a Greek trip. Athens is four hours by car, Nafplio two and a half. Most visitors come in for a single long day and leave; that is the wrong shape. Stay a night in Olympia town or up the coast at Katakolo, walk the ruins in the late afternoon when the buses have gone, do the museum the next morning, and drive on.
The Games began here in 776 BC and ran for nearly twelve centuries, until the emperor Theodosius I banned pagan festivals in 393 AD. The sanctuary, the Altis, was the walled ground inside which the temples and altars stood. The Temple of Zeus held Phidias's chryselephantine statue, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; only the floor outline and a few column drums remain. The Temple of Hera, older and smaller, is where the modern Olympic flame is still kindled by mirror-focus before each Games. The Philippeion, a small circular monument built by Philip II of Macedon to commemorate his victory at Chaeronea, is one of the more architecturally distinguished buildings on the site.
Walk down the Sacred Way, through the vaulted entry tunnel, and out into the stadium. The starting blocks of pale limestone are still in place, worn at one corner. The embankments held about forty thousand standing spectators. Stand on the line and look down it.
The Archaeological Museum holds, alongside the pediment sculptures from the Temple of Zeus, the Hermes of Praxiteles, one of the few surviving original works by a named ancient sculptor. The face is preserved well enough to read the expression. The smaller Museum of the Olympic Games of Antiquity in the village is often empty and worth a short visit. Two nights, with a long lunch in between.
House Notes
Arrival
Kalamata airport is 90 minutes south by car; the four-hour Athens motorway run is the alternative. Yacht guests berth at Katakolo, the small Ionian port that once served the sanctuary. Most members make the run as a day-trip from Messinia rather than overnighting in the village.
The address
Costa Navarino, in Messinia, holds the closest base of pedigree. The Romanos and the Mandarin Oriental occupy the same masterplan; Olympia is the day's drive north, an hour and a half by car. The village around the sanctuary is small inns and pensions, useful for an overnight rather than a stay.
The Heraion
The Temple of Hera, north of the Temple of Zeus under the foothills of Mount Kronios, is the oldest monumental stone temple at the sanctuary — raised around 600 BC. Its columns began in wood and were replaced in stone over the centuries, so the surviving drums and capitals vary in diameter and fluting, no two quite alike. The Heraion once safeguarded the disk of Iphitos, inscribed with the Sacred Truce. The flame is kindled at the altar before the temple.
The marble
The Hermes of Praxiteles, found on 8 May 1877 in the cella of the Temple of Hera by Ernst Curtius's German mission, stands at 2.13 metres in Parian marble. The face is intact; the raised right arm, which once held a bunch of grapes for the infant Dionysus, is not.
The workshop
South of the Altis sits the Workshop of Phidias, excavated by the German Archaeological Institute between 1954 and 1958. The interior — 15 by 32 metres — matches the cella of the Temple of Zeus, where the chryselephantine statue would stand. The most-quoted find is a small Attic cup scratched on its base, 'Φειδίου εἰμί' — I belong to Phidias.
The grove
Pierre de Coubertin's heart rests in a stele in a planted grove on the slopes of Kronos Hill, brought to Olympia on his own instruction in 1938. The grove sits on the grounds of the International Olympic Academy, ten minutes' walk from the sanctuary, and is on the published Tour of Ancient Olympia route.
The forest
Foloi, the oak forest 30 kilometres north-east of the sanctuary, is mostly Hungarian oak (Quercus frainetto) at around 690 metres above the Erymanthos foothills, protected as Oropedio Folois under Natura 2000. Named for Pholos, the centaur who sheltered Heracles on the chase for the Erymanthian boar; an hour in the trees rewards the drive.
The estate
Mercouri Estate, founded in 1864 at Korakochori by Theodoros Mercouri — 3 kilometres inland from Katakolo, 32 from the sanctuary. The signature red is the estate's Refosco clone, planted from northern Italy in the founding decade and naturalised here since. The fourth and fifth generations of the Kanellakopoulos family hold the cellars.
The springs
Kaiafas Lake, 20 kilometres south of Olympia, holds the warmest sulfur springs of the western Peloponnese, 32 to 33 degrees in the open-air curative tank and the 14 private baths under the shelter. The lake — 3 kilometres long, just over 2 metres deep — opened with the earthquakes of the sixth century AD. The hydrotherapy season runs June through October.
The Syngreion
The Museum of the History of the Olympic Games of Antiquity occupies the Syngreion, the 1880s neoclassical building that was the site's first museum. It reopened on 24 March 2004 with around 400 objects drawn from across Greece. Rarely crowded; the right place to close the visit.