Olympia: The Sanctuary of Zeus and Home of the Ancient Games

Olympia was the great sanctuary of Zeus in the western Peloponnese of Greece and the home of the ancient Olympic Games. Worship there began by around the 10th century BC, and for more than a thousand years Greeks from across the Mediterranean gathered in its sacred grove to sacrifice, compete and display their wealth. Buried by floods after antiquity, the site was rediscovered in the 18th century and excavated by German archaeologists from 1875.

The setting and early history

Olympia lies in a gentle valley in the region of Elis, where the Kladeos stream joins the Alpheios river beneath the pine-covered Hill of Kronos. It was not a city but a sanctuary, run for most of its history by the state of Elis, with occasional challenges from the neighbouring town of Pisa.

There was prehistoric settlement nearby in the Early and Middle Bronze Age. The sanctuary itself grew from the 10th century BC, when worshippers began leaving small bronze and clay figurines of animals and warriors. Thousands of these offerings have been found. The traditional date of the first Olympic Games, 776 BC, falls within this early phase.

The Altis and its temples

The heart of Olympia was the Altis, a sacred grove enclosed by a wall. At its centre stood the great altar of Zeus, a cone of ash from the thighs of sacrificed animals, which Pausanias says rose to about 22 feet. Nearby was the Pelopion, a shrine to the hero Pelops.

The Temple of Hera, or Heraion, was built around 600 BC and is one of the oldest Doric temples in Greece. Its columns were originally of wood and were replaced with stone one by one, which explains why the surviving capitals differ in style. When Pausanias visited in the 2nd century AD, one oak column still stood.

The Temple of Zeus was built between about 470 and 456 BC by the architect Libon of Elis. Its east pediment showed the preparations for the chariot race between Pelops and Oinomaos, and the west pediment the fight between the Lapiths and Centaurs. Twelve metopes depicted the labours of Heracles. Many of these sculptures survive in the Olympia museum and are masterpieces of the early Classical style.

Inside the temple stood Phidias’ gold and ivory Statue of Zeus, made around 435 BC and about 12 metres tall, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Archaeologists found Phidias’ workshop just west of the Altis in the 1950s, including tools, clay moulds and a small jug inscribed with the words “I belong to Pheidias”.

Treasuries, statues and monuments

On a terrace at the foot of the Hill of Kronos stood a row of treasuries, small temple-like buildings in which Greek cities stored offerings. Most were built by colonies and distant cities, including Syracuse, Gela, Selinus, Metapontum, Sybaris, Byzantium, Cyrene and Epidamnus, as well as Megara and Sicyon. They show how Olympia linked the Greek homeland with the colonial world.

The sanctuary was crowded with victory statues and dedications. The Nike of Paionios, a marble figure of Victory set on a tall pillar around 420 BC by the Messenians and Naupactians, survives in the museum. The Philippeion, a circular building begun by Philip II of Macedon after his victory at Chaeronea in 338 BC and completed under Alexander the Great, displayed statues of the Macedonian royal family.

Athletic buildings

The stadium lay just east of the Altis. Its present form dates from the Classical period, when it was moved further east and slightly north, away from the Altis. The track measures about 192 metres between the starting lines, and grass embankments held an estimated 40,000 to 45,000 spectators. Athletes entered through a vaulted tunnel, the Krypte, built in the Hellenistic period.

To the west were the training facilities: the palaestra, a square wrestling school of the 3rd century BC, and the large gymnasium of the 2nd century BC, with a covered track for practice in bad weather. The hippodrome for chariot races has never been found and is thought to have been washed away by the Alpheios.

Other buildings served officials and guests. The Bouleuterion housed the Olympic council, the Leonidaion of about 330 BC was a large guest house for important visitors, and the Echo Stoa was famous for repeating sounds seven times. In about AD 150, the wealthy Athenian Herodes Atticus funded an aqueduct and a monumental fountain, solving the site’s chronic water shortage.

Decline and burial

Olympia flourished under Roman rule, but in the 390s AD the emperor Theodosius I banned pagan cults and the games came to an end, traditionally in AD 393. The Temple of Zeus was damaged, possibly by fire in the 5th century, and a small Christian community later built a church in Phidias’ workshop.

Earthquakes in the 6th century, traditionally dated to AD 522 and 551, toppled the great temple’s columns, which still lie where they fell. Floods and landslides from the Kladeos and Alpheios then buried the site under several metres of silt and sand.

Rediscovery and excavation

The English traveller Richard Chandler identified the site in 1766. In 1829 the French Expédition scientifique de Morée dug briefly at the Temple of Zeus and took fragments of its metopes to the Louvre.

Systematic excavation began in 1875 under Ernst Curtius, with the architect Friedrich Adler, funded by the German state. An agreement with Greece stated that all finds would remain in Greece, a pioneering arrangement at the time. By 1881 the Germans had uncovered the main buildings and found the Hermes attributed to Praxiteles in the Temple of Hera in 1877. Excavation resumed in 1936 with support linked to the Berlin Olympics, and the German Archaeological Institute continues to work at Olympia today.

Legacy

Olympia shaped how Europeans imagined ancient Greece. The excavation reports and casts of the Temple of Zeus sculptures influenced museums and art schools across Europe, and the discovery of the sanctuary in the 1870s helped inspire Pierre de Coubertin’s revival of the Olympic Games in 1896.

The site also changed archaeology itself. The German team’s careful recording of layers, finds and building phases, and the rule that finds stayed in the host country, became models for later large excavations in the Mediterranean.

Olympia was added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1989. Since 1936 the Olympic flame has been lit before the Temple of Hera, linking each modern Games to the ancient site. In August 2007 wildfires reached the edge of the sanctuary and burned the Hill of Kronos, but firefighters saved the ruins and the museum.

Timeline

• c. 10th century BC: earliest votive offerings in the sanctuary.
• 776 BC: traditional date of the first Olympic Games.
• c. 600 BC: the Temple of Hera is built.
• c. 470–456 BC: the Temple of Zeus is built by Libon of Elis.
• c. 435 BC: Phidias completes the statue of Zeus.
• 338 BC onwards: the Philippeion is built by Philip II and Alexander.
• AD 393: traditional end of the ancient Olympic Games.
• AD 522 and 551: earthquakes traditionally said to have toppled the Temple of Zeus.
• 1875–1881: German excavations under Ernst Curtius uncover the sanctuary.
• 1989: Olympia is inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why it matters

Olympia was a meeting place for the whole Greek world, where rival cities competed in sport and in splendid offerings rather than on the battlefield. Its ruins and museum preserve some of the finest Greek sculpture, and its name still stands for the ideal of international competition.