Olympia

Olympia is a city similar to Delphi: here you will see the same flow of tourists going to the archaeological reserve. The modern city itself is of little interest.

The site of the excavation of ancient Olympia is located at the foot of the mountain Kronos, in the sacred grove of Altis, near the confluence of the rivers Alpheus and Kladeos. It is inextricably connected and beautifully combined with the surrounding cypress and pine grove. Even before the sanctuary of Zeus became here and the Olympic Games were held, Olympia was widely known as the sanctuary of Gaia (goddess of the earth) and Kronos (son of Gaia and Uranus, father of Zeus). According to myth, chariot races were held here in honor of Pelops, who defeated Enomaus, king of Pisa, in a chariot race. The majestic Pelopion in the central part of the sanctuary is dedicated to Pelops. The entire Peloponnesian peninsula was also named after Pelops. After the Dorian invasion, Zeus was honored and games were dedicated to him, the origin of which remains unclear.

According to legend, the All-Greek Games were founded by Hercules, in honor of his father. For the duration of the games all military activities in Greece ceased. The Olympian Games continued to flourish until the fourth century B.C., but probably from the third century onwards the sacred nature of the games, which signified the desire for peace and unity of peoples, was lost, and they became a simple competition between athletes.

A visit to the sanctuary begins with the porticoes of the Hellenistic gymnasium (2nd century B.C.) located in its north-western part. It was two long galleries running along the Field of Mars with a running track where runners competed in bad weather.

A little to the south is located the palaestra with its restored colonnade. This square building (66.75 by 66.35 m) was intended for wrestling and training athletes.

Further south you will see the impressive ruins of a three-aisled early Christian basilica, built in the 5th century on the site of Phidias' workshop. There from 430 BC to 420 BC the artist created a statue of Zeus in gold and ivory, which was destined to perish in Constantinople in a fire. We can get a distant impression of it only from the images on the coins.

Walking further, you will see the foundations of the Leonidaion, an ancient house for noble visitors, founded by Leonidas, a resident of Naxos, in the fourth century B.C. It expanded twice during the Roman era. The building had a Doric peristyle with 44 columns in the center with living rooms around it and galleries on the outside. Next to the Leonidion was the southern Thermae and behind it the Buleutherium.

You continue to explore. There are the ruins of the famous Doric temple of Zeus, built of local stone, hard limestone. The facades of the temple had 6 columns and 13 on its sides. The sculptural decoration was made of marble. Reliefs of twelve metopes represented each one feat of Heracles. The subject of the sculptural composition of the main, eastern, facade was the myth of the contest between Pelops and Oenomaus; the western facade depicts the centauros. The surviving sculptures of the temple pediments and metopes are exhibited in the museum.

The eastern part of the archaeological reserve is occupied by the hippodrome (690 by 320 m) and the stadium. To get to the stadium, you have to go through the vaulted corridor of the first century, which was used by the competitors and the referees. The stadium was designed for at least 20,000 spectators (men only, because the athletes were naked). You can still distinguish the start and finish lines.

A little to the north of the temple of Zeus are the remains of Pelopion, dedicated to Pelops, and behind it is the temple of Hera (600 BC), one of the earliest known Doric temples. The area between the temple of Hera and the stadium was occupied by the treasuries of various Greek cities. These are small, chapel-like rooms of the sixth and fifth centuries BC, where gifts from the cities to the sanctuary were kept.

The Archaeological Museum occupies a modern building and is located near the excavation site. You can see unique works of Greek sculpture in the museum. Be sure to visit the hall where the reconstructed full-size pediments of the temple of Zeus in Paros marble are displayed. In the Hermes hall is a magnificent marble statue of Hermes with little Dionysus by Praxiteles (330 BC). It is the only surviving original by Praxiteles. It is believed that the sculptor used a mythological plot - Hermes had to give his newborn son Dionysus to the nymphs to save him from the wrath of Hera at the behest of Zeus. Hermes is depicted at the moment when, tired on his way, he stops in a grove. This sculpture was found during an excavation in 1877.

Museum of the Olympic Games. The date of the first Olympic Games is considered to be 776 BC. They were held every four years. Only Greeks could take part in them, and only free citizens. The Barbarians were only allowed to participate in the games as spectators. Over the course of five days there were competitions in running, wrestling, fist fights, javelin and discus throwing, chariot races and more. The games began to lose their importance under the Romans, with the arrival of Nero, who held a poetry contest at the site. And in the second century AD, Emperor Hadrian tried to revive the sanctuary. In 334 AD the games were abolished. In 1896, already in the new era, at the initiative of the French public figure Baron Pierre de Cubertaine in Athens, the capital of Greece, the first Olympic Games were held, which then began regularly, every 4 years, in different cities of the world.