Ancient Olympia

Across the Corinth Canal and through the heart of the Peloponnese to a green river valley in Elis, where for nearly twelve centuries the Greek world stopped fighting every four years and came to run.

Tour highlights

• The Temple of Zeus, once home to a Wonder of the World
• The ancient stadium and its marble starting line
• The Philippeion
• The Temple of Hera and the Olympic flame altar
• The workshop of Pheidias
• The Archaeological Museum of Olympia
• The Hermes of Praxiteles
• The Nike of Paionios

About this journey

The Games ran here every four years from 776 BC to AD 393 — close to twelve hundred years — as part of a festival for Zeus. A sacred truce was declared so athletes and spectators could travel safely through territory that was often at war.

The Temple of Zeus, designed by Libon of Elis and dedicated in 457 BC, dominated the sanctuary. Inside stood Pheidias’ colossal chryselephantine statue of Zeus — gold and ivory over a wooden core, roughly twelve metres tall — counted among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The temple was toppled by earthquake and its drums lie where they fell, which is somehow more impressive than if they had been re-erected.

Walk through the vaulted entrance tunnel into the stadium and the scale surprises everyone: a plain rectangle of packed earth with grass banks for spectators and the original marble sill still set into the ground, grooved so runners could brace their toes. The Philippeion, a circular tholos begun by Philip II around 338 BC, held gold-and-ivory statues of his family including a young Alexander — the moment the sanctuary began honouring men alongside gods.

The museum holds the temple’s pediment sculptures, the Nike of Paionios, and the Hermes of Praxiteles, found exactly where the traveller Pausanias said it stood, in the Temple of Hera. Beside that temple is the altar where the Olympic flame is still kindled by mirror before every modern Games and begins its journey to the host city.

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