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

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

  8. 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.

  9. 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.

  10. 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.

Mythology

  1. Zeus

    Olympia was a principal sanctuary of Zeus, where his fifth-century BC temple housed Pheidias’s colossal gold-and-ivory image. Pausanias describes sacrifice at an outdoor altar built up from the ash of offerings rather than cut stone.

  2. Hermes

    At Olympia, the statue known as Hermes by Praxiteles stood in the Temple of Hera rather than a sanctuary of Hermes. Its setting placed the god of crossings and thresholds among the treasures of the sanctuary’s earliest temple.

  3. Eileithyia

    At the foot of Mount Cronius, the Eleans worshipped Eileithyia Olympian and appointed her priestess each year. Her sanctuary also housed Sosipolis, a local child-shaped protector tended by an elderly priestess.

  4. Gaia

    Pausanias saw an ash altar of Earth at Olympia on the place called the Gaeum. He also records the local claim that an oracle of Earth had stood there in earlier times.

  5. Ganymede

    The Archaeological Museum of Olympia holds a large clay group of Zeus carrying Ganymede to Olympus. Found nearly intact in the Stadium area during the 1878 excavations, the work is dated to about 470 BC.

  6. Hestia

    Olympia’s Prytaneion held the sacred hearth of the Eleans, whose fire burned by day and night. Pausanias says its ashes were taken to the ash altar of Zeus, binding the civic fire to the sanctuary’s chief sacrifice.

  7. Kronos

    Olympia preserved Kronos as an earlier ruler through stories of the Golden Race and the childhood of Zeus. Pausanias records an annual spring sacrifice by priests called the Basilae on the summit of Mount Cronius above the sanctuary.

  8. Nike

    Paionios’s Nike stood high on a pillar at Olympia as a dedication funded by Messenian war spoils. The inscription does not name the defeated enemy, and Pausanias preserves competing accounts of which victory the monument celebrated.

  9. Nyx

    Pausanias saw Nyx on the Chest of Cypselus in the temple of Hera at Olympia. She held two sleeping children, one white and one black, identified by inscriptions as Sleep and Death.

  10. Pausanias

    Books 5 and 6 are given wholly to Olympia, room by room around the Altis. German excavation, begun there in 1875, has matched some of what Pausanias catalogued and left the rest unconfirmed: of the fifteen treasuries he names (6.19.1), only five are securely identified, and of the gold-and-ivory Zeus by Pheidias he describes at length (5.10.2), nothing survives beyond its image on coins of Elis.

  11. Pindar

    Olympian 1 identifies itself as a song for Hieron of Syracuse's victory in the single-horse race at Olympia in 476 BC. Pindar sets that victory beside Pelops's race and cult at the sanctuary, making Olympia the occasion and sacred ground of the poem rather than a passing reference.

  12. Rhea

    Olympia’s early fourth-century BC Metroon housed worship of the Mother of the Gods, identified there as Rhea or Cybele. The temple placed the mother of Zeus inside the sanctuary ruled by her son.

  13. Selene

    In Pausanias’s Elean account, Selene loves Endymion, who sets his sons a race at Olympia with the kingdom as its prize. The Eleans also identified Endymion’s tomb beside the runners’ starting place in the stadium.

  14. The Ancient Olympic Games

    The ancient Olympic Games were held within Zeus's sanctuary at Olympia. The surviving stadium, its starting line, the Bouleuterion and the wider Altis preserve the distinct settings in which competitors registered, officials judged and the festival's contests took place.

  15. The Centauromachy

    The Temple of Zeus at Olympia carried the Centauromachy across its west pediment, carved in Parian marble around 476–457 BC. The Archaeological Museum of Olympia holds the temple’s surviving pedimental figures.

  16. The Ceryneian Hind

    The Temple of Zeus at Olympia carried the Ceryneian Hind among its sculpted Labours. Its fragmentary panel preserves portions of the hind and Heracles in Olympia, with two small original fragments in the Louvre; a head and torso used in the old reconstruction belong instead to the Amazon metope.

  17. The Cretan Bull

    The Temple of Zeus at Olympia carried Heracles's capture of the Cretan Bull among its metopes. The Louvre holds Ma 716, the surviving upper two thirds of the Parian-marble panel, with Heracles's arms and the bull's head missing.

  18. The Erymanthian Boar

    The Temple of Zeus at Olympia carved the live boar arriving before Eurystheus among its sequence of Labours. The Louvre records the original panel in four fragments, preserving parts of Heracles and Eurystheus and the boar's snout.

  19. The Heraia at Olympia

    The Heraia was run at Olympia in the Olympic stadium itself, on a course shortened by about one sixth for the maidens who competed, and the winners took a crown of olive and a share of the cow sacrificed to Hera. Pausanias attaches the games to the temple of Hera he describes immediately before them, which the Eleans told him the people of Scillus built and whose rear chamber still had one pillar of oak when he saw it.

  20. The Labours of Heracles

    The Temple of Zeus at Olympia carries all twelve labours on its metopes, six above the pronaos and six above the opisthodomos, though Pausanias's own description of them ends on the cleansing of the Augean stables and never mentions Cerberus. Pausanias also records two unreconciled traditions about the first games at Olympia, one crediting an earlier Cretan Dactyl also named Heracles, the other crediting Heracles son of Amphitryon, who held them again after conquering Elis.

  21. The Nemean Lion

    The Temple of Zeus at Olympia carried the Nemean Lion at one end of its carved sequence of Labours. The Louvre identifies the only surviving original fragment as Ma 718, a Parian-marble section showing the dead lion and part of Heracles.

  22. The Oath at Olympia

    The Olympic oath was sworn at Olympia in the Council Chamber, beside an image of Zeus Horkios holding a thunderbolt in each hand, on slices of boar's flesh. Pausanias also saw the bronze Zanes standing along the road to the stadium, bought with the fines of athletes who had broken the rules, and read the inscription telling the Greeks that an Olympic victory is won by swiftness of foot and strength of body and not by money.

  23. The Stymphalian Birds

    The Temple of Zeus at Olympia placed the Stymphalian Birds among its carved Labours. The Louvre records three surviving original fragments of the panel, showing seated Athena and parts of Heracles, with fixing traces where metal birds once completed the scene.

  24. The Temple of Zeus at Olympia

    The Temple of Zeus stood inside Olympia’s Altis and carried three sculptural sequences: Pelops and Oinomaos on the east pediment, the Centauromachy on the west and the Labours of Heracles on the metopes. Its lost interior statue was made by Pheidias in a workshop opposite the temple.

  25. The Titanomachy

    Pausanias reports the Elean tradition that Cronus was worshipped on the hill above the sanctuary before Zeus was, and that some at Olympia said Zeus and Cronus settled the throne between themselves there, by wrestling, rather than in Hesiod's war. Archaeologists have traced cult activity at the foot of that hill, the Hill of Cronus, to a period before the sanctuary's own Zeus cult existed.