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The overnight and this morning's temperature didn't seem to change much from when we went to bed last night as the breeze is so warm so it was very pleasant having breakfast on our patio in the front of the apartment.
Even though it was warm the sky had clouded over although it didn't look like it would rain and we actually wondered whether the 'cloud cover'was a fog off the sea but not at ground level.
Anyway it didn't look like it would affect our visit to Olympia,which was the main reason for us coming to Greece and travelling this far south.It has long been an ambition to visit the home of the original Olympic Games and see where it all started in the 8th century BC.
We had intended to drive the 20 odd kilometres to Olympia in the morning and have lunch there as there was not just the site to walk around but also a museum to visit.However,we had the opportunity to catch both our daughters,separately,on Skype as well as Chris & Marilyn and Ruth & Owen and catch up with their news from home.So after all of these calls it was nearly lunchtime
and we delayed heading to Olympia until after lunch at the apartment.
As you might expect with a site as old as this ,it is not on a modern main road but out in the 'middle of nowhere' with a maze of roads to take to get there,especially from the direction we came from.However,with a number of hotels,restaurants and the inevitabe souvenir tourist shops, a small town has grown up around the ancient site.
Finding a free park was easy and it was a short walk to the site entrance.The buses in the official car park gave some warning of what was ahead in terms of tour groups who can be a pain at these types of attractions as the groups tend to gather in a circle around what you want to look at and usually have a tour guide jabbering away in a foreign language.However,as summer gets closer we can expect to come up against larger numbers of people in general.
Today was going to be a test of the tour groups and how to beat them between different parts of the site and in particular the main attractions.
As we entered we noticed that
excavations were still happening at what was the gymnasium and there were 5 or 6 people busy digging around a grid marked out.
We don't have an in depth knowledge of the classical period so we won't try and describe in any detail the various temples etc and what they were built for and when, as this blog would need to stretch to many thousands of words and we don't want to put you to sleep.However,there is a good concise description of the site on Wikipedia if you want more detail than we provide here.
The main feature other than the stadium where the contests took place is the Temple of Zeus which was built between 472 and 456BC and would have been the major building on the site looking very majestic with its doric columns.The temple housed the Statue of Zeus which was 13 metres high and was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.The temple was destroyed by the Romans in 426 AD and then subsequent major earthquakes devastated the ruins even more.After many years of being buried the remains of the temple were excavated in 1829 after interest had been shown in the
mid 1700's in finding the buried temple.
There is some debate as to what happened to the statue of Zeus but whether it was destroyed in a fire in Constantinople or it met its fate somewhere else, it is no longer around and so the best you can do is see what it might have looked like in many drawings of the massive statue.
Another interesting place on the site is the Nymphaeum of Herodes Atticus of which enough of the structure remains or has been reconstructed to give you a good idea how this type of fountain would have looked.
Just along from this were a number of treasuries where offerings were stored.Near these and just before the entry to the stadium were the sixteen bases of Zanes,essentially blocks of stone which identified athletes who were fined during the games for cheating.They were arranged at the entrance to remind competitors that they wouldn't want their names and cheating activity recorded there!
Then came the entrance to the stadium,known as the crypt.This was in the form of an arched entrance to the stadium itself.
If there was one area we were a bit disappointed about
was the stadium itself although neither of us were sure what to expect but we did think that there would have been more to it than what has been excavated and now on display.There were never any actual seats in the stadium although the embankment could hold 45,000 people.Given the area before us we found this a bit hard to believe thinking of the size of some football stadiums down in our part of the world.
We didn't want to show off in front of all the people gathered at the entrance by running up and down pretending we were from ancient times although Gretchen did take a photo of me in a pose that was supposed to be me crossing the winning line in first place(well we had to have something that will remind us what the place was all about!)
We took the path to where Nero had built his villa in the first century AD on top of the altar of Artemis from the 4th century BC which was supposed to have mosaics that had been found.However the villa was closed and we could not get access to the mosaics.
By the time we
were finished strolling around the large site the tour groups were climbing back on their buses and heading back to wherever they had come from for the day.A couple of them,like us,then went onto the museum which houses many precious artefacts from the site excavated over the years.
While we aren't always that keen on museums this one did have a lot to keep us interested as we went from period to period effectively tracing how man during several hundred years had developed socially and culturally.
After a short stroll around the local shops we headed back to Zacharo and our apartment, fully satisfied with our afternoon out and another name and place ticked off our bucket list.If you have an interest in the world's greatest sporting event and how it got started then a visit to ancient Olympia should be on your itinerary if you come to Greece.
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KJ
non-member comment
Masters Games Olympics perhaps?
What a great pose brother...must have been the 60+ race at the Olympia Masters Games 2013. Makes for great reading and viewing seeing these famous places from little old NZ!