greece 2002/3

greece 2002/3: olympia

page 14 of 15

To perhaps belabor the obvious, Olympia is where the Olympics were invented... It started out (or became) games in honor of Zeus. There was once a large shrine and a famous statue of Zeus here. Now, it's possible to see where it stood, and where it was built (and even the church that was built in the remains of the building where the statue was built).

The stadium, the heart of the games, was left in the Old Style: Other stadiums (e.g., Delphi) started out with grassy hills for the audience, and with rules prohibiting women from watching anything but female competitions, but modernized by building stone seating and doing away with gender restrictions. In Olympia, such innovations never caught on. Here is what the Hellenic Ministry of Culture says about Olympia.

As you may be able to see from the photos, this is the one day when our site-seeing was seriously impacted by rain. We had actually planned on there being this much rain for days on end, so we were well-equipped and it barely slowed us down. But it was a good reminder at how lucky we were with the weather, in general. The downside of Olympia: The museum was closed for renovations, in preparation for the Olympics being held in Athens. (The other downside: Driving across the mountains to get to Olympia, in the misty rain, the car's brakes locked up. The up-side: We slid into the mountain side of the roadway and not the cliff side.)

olympia-stadium

olympia-palestra

olympia-temple-of-hera

olympia-breakfast

olympia-a-view-of-the-palaestra	olympia-column	olympia-column-bases-and-capitals	olympia-column-pieces
olympia-column-pieces_2	olympia-column3	olympia-column_2	olympia-dannette-standing-across-from-the-12-statues-of-zeus-with-stadium-entrance
olympia-nathan-inside-the-basilica-built-in-pheidias-workshop-where-zues-was-built	olympia-nymphaeum	olympia-palaestra-with-nathan	olympia-stadium
olympia-the-basilica-built-in-pheidias-workshop-where-zues-was-built	olympia-writing	olympia-writing_2	olympia-writing_3