Olympia

Olympia is an ancient sanctuary of Zeus in the valley of the Alfeios River in Elis, in the western Peloponnese of Greece. From the eighth century BCE until the end of the fourth century CE it hosted the Olympic Games, held every four years and attended by visitors from across the Greek world, which helped give the scattered Greek city-states a shared identity. Its temples, treasuries, stadium and the great gold-and-ivory statue of Zeus made it one of the most famous places of antiquity. Despite its name, it lies far from Mount Olympus in the north.

The early history of the site is debated. It was once thought to have been occupied from about 1500 BCE, with a cult of Zeus emerging around 1000 BCE; some scholars now think the sanctuary began only in the ninth or eighth century BCE, while others point to burnt offerings from the tenth century as evidence of earlier worship. Excavation at the Pelopion, the shrine of the legendary king Pelops, has produced pottery from the eleventh century onwards. Greek legend credited Heracles with laying out the sacred grove, the Altis, and founding the games, a story told by the poet Pindar. Tradition dated the first games to 776 BCE, organised by the state of Elis.

Control of the sanctuary was contested. Elis lost it to the neighbouring Pisatans in 676 BCE and won it back around 580 BCE in alliance with Sparta. The earliest surviving building, the Temple of Hera, dates from about 600 BCE, and during the sixth century the city-states built treasuries along a terrace, a council house was added, and the first simple stadium was laid out around 560 BCE. More events were added to the festival over that century.

The fifth and fourth centuries BCE were the sanctuary's golden age. The Temple of Zeus, built in the middle of the fifth century, was far larger and richer than anything before it, and it housed the seated statue of Zeus by the sculptor Pheidias, of ivory and gold on a wooden frame, which Antipater of Sidon counted among the Seven Wonders of the World. Pheidias's workshop, identified by finds of his tools, was excavated in the 1950s. The final stadium, the hippodrome for chariot races, baths and the Prytaneion followed. Unlike Delphi, where monuments were crowded inside the sacred boundary, Olympia spread well beyond its precinct wall, especially around the athletic grounds. The length of the stadium track became the stadion, a standard Greek unit of distance. The Olympic truce guaranteed safe passage for visitors but did not halt wars.

In the late fourth century BCE the Philippeion was added, and around 300 BCE the Leonidaion, the largest building on the site, was built to house distinguished guests, followed by a palaestra and a gymnasium. Under Roman rule the games were opened to all citizens of the Roman Empire, the Temple of Zeus was repaired, and new baths, a monumental fountain and an aqueduct were built in the second century CE.

Earthquakes damaged the site in the third century, and after invaders struck in 267 its centre was walled with stone taken from older monuments. The last Olympiad recorded at the site was held in 393, after which Theodosius I banned the festival. The Temple of Zeus seems to have been destroyed around 426, following a decree of Theodosius II against pagan festivals, and Pheidias's workshop became a church for a Christian community living among the ruins.

In later centuries the ruins were buried under up to eight metres of sediment, long blamed on river floods, though some researchers have suggested tsunamis. The English antiquarian Richard Chandler identified the site in 1766. French scholars of the Morea Expedition made the first excavations in 1829 and located the Temple of Zeus. From 1875 German teams led by Ernst Curtius uncovered the heart of the sanctuary and recorded 14,000 objects, among them the Hermes of Praxiteles and the Nike of Paionios, and the German Archaeological Institute has worked there ever since.

When the Olympic Games were revived on an international basis in 1894, Olympia became their symbol. The Olympic flame is still lit by the sun's rays in front of the Temple of Hera before being carried to each host city, and in 2004 the shot put events of the Athens Games were held in the ancient stadium.