Ancient sanctuary and site of the ancient Olympic Games, located in the western Peloponnese, 16 kilometres inland from the Ionian Sea, near a point where the Alpheus and Cladeus rivers meet. The country is rich and well watered, consisting of low, wooded hills alternating with farmland. The earliest remains date from 2000 to 1600 BC, the sanctuary itself from around 1000. First controlled by the town of Pisa, after 570 BC Olympia came under the jurisdiction of Elis and Sparta. The religious festival, of which the Games were a part, was held there every four years from the 8th century BC until the end of the 4th century AD. The first excavations were conducted on the site of the Temple of Zeus in 1829 by the French Expedition Scientifique de Moree. The temple was sufficiently cleared to reveal its general plan, and fragments of three sculptured panels were found, which were later placed in the Louvre, in Paris.
The great German excavations of 1875-81 cleared the whole of the sacred precinct and some buildings that lay outside it; the position of the stadium was located by exploratory trenches. Thus the plan of a great Greek sanctuary was revealed for the first time. In the early 20th century some small-scale exploratory digging was done in the deeper layers in the sanctuary. Large-scale work was resumed by the Germans in 1936, one of the chief aims being the excavation and restoration of the stadium. Interrupted by World War II in 1942, work was resumed in 1952, and in 1960 the excavation of the stadium was completed, with its restoration in 1961. Other structures were explored in this period, the most important of which was the workshop of the sculptor Phidias. The sacred precinct, the Altis, or Sacred Grove of Zeus, was an irregular quadrangle more than 182.9 metres on a side, bounded on the north by the hill of Cronus and enclosed by a wall on the other three sides. In it were the temples of Zeus and Hera, the principal altars and votive offerings, the treasuries, and administration buildings. Outside were the athletic installations and the hostels, baths, and other accommodations for visitors.
The Temple of Zeus was the largest and most important building at Olympia and one of the largest Doric temples in Greece. Built about 460 BC by the architect Libon of Elis, the temple was made of a coarse local shell conglomerate, the exposed surfaces being covered with a coat of fine white stucco. The temple had 6 columns across the front and 13 on the sides. There was a porch and an rear porch, and the cella was divided into three aisles by two rows of slender columns arranged in two stories. The roof tiles were of marble.The temple was richly decorated with sculpture, much of which has survived and is to be seen in the Olympia Museum. In the front gable the chariot race between Pelops and Oenomaus was represented, and both parties were shown preparing for the race. In the back gable was the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs at the wedding of Perithous. These sculptures are masterpieces of the early Classical style, but the name of the artist is not known. Pausanias' attribution of them to Paeonius and Alcamenes is generally rejected because these sculptors are known to have worked in the later 5th century. The frieze that ran above the front and back porches had sculptured metopes with the 12 labours of Heracles, 6 at each end. At the peak of the gable was a gilded figure of Victory and at each corner a gilded caldron, but these have not survived. Within the temple was the great gold and ivory statue of Zeus, the work of the Athenian sculptor Phidias, the most famous of all ancient statues and counted one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It made a profound impression on all who saw it, and people generally agreed that Phidias had succeeded in creating the image of Homer's Zeus.
The god was represented seated on an elaborately wrought throne. He held a figure of the goddess of Victory in his right hand and a sceptre in his left. This statue (which was destroyed sometime in the 5th century AD) was made piece by piece by Phidias and his collaborators in a building just outside the Altis to the west of the temple. Subsequently converted into a church, the building was still known in the time of Pausanias as the "workshop of Phidias." The excavations of 1954-58 brought dramatic confirmation of the identification. In the deep layers in and around the building, particularly toward the south, a great mass of material, evidently waste from an artist's atelier, was found. This material included tools, slivers and worked fragments of ivory and bone, glass ornaments, and molds. The clay molds, of a very heavy fabric, like roof tiles, with the larger ones sometimes reinforced with iron rods, are of an unusual open form and were evidently used for hammering into shape the thin plates of gold that formed the statue's drapery. Pottery found with this debris indicates that the workshop was active in the years around 430 BC, an important fact because it settles an old controversy as to whether Phidias made the Zeus before or after his other great chryselephantine statue, the Athena Parthenos, which was completed in 438 BC. The new evidence is decisively in favour of the later date. One of the pieces of pottery, a ribbed mug, has inscribed on its bottom in neat clear letters the words "I am [the property] of Phidias." The great altar of Olympian Zeus was not in front of the temple, as might have been expected, but to one side and nearer the Temple of Hera. It was elliptical in shape and consisted of an elevated base approached by steps. From the base rose a large mound made of the ashes of the thighs of animal victims sacrificed to Zeus. The whole height of the altar was 6.7 metres. The oldest temple at Olympia and one of the most venerable in all Greece was that of Hera, originally a joint temple of Hera and Zeus until a separate temple was built for him. It has sometimes been thought that the Temple of Hera was built in the 11th or 10th century BC, but this view is now rejected. The existing temple was probably built about 600 BC, and an earlier phase, without colonnade, may go back to the 8th century. The temple is long and narrow, having 6 columns across the ends and 16 along the sides. The columns are Doric, showing a great variety of styles because they were originally of wood and were gradually replaced in stone. In the 2nd century AD there was still one wooden column in the opisthodomos. The entablature was of wood, and the upper parts of the walls were of mud brick. The cella had two interior rows of columns, alternate columns being attached by spurs to the cella walls and thus forming bays. Pausanias says that in the temple was an image of Hera seated on a throne with an image of Zeus standing beside her. An archaic limestone head thought to be that of the Hera has been found. Pausanias also reports the existence of a stone statue of Hermes carrying the young Dionysus, a work of Praxiteles that was found in the cella of the temple in 1877 and is one of the most prized possessions of the Olympia Museum. A row of 12 treasuries overlooked the Altis from the lowest slopes of the hill of Cronus. These small structures in the form of Doric temples date from the 6th century BC. All were erected by Dorian states ranging from Byzantium to Gela in Sicily and Cyrene in northern Africa. In the case of only three, Sicyon, Megara, and Gela, is enough material available to allow a reconstruction on paper. These treasuries were erected by the several states either as thanks offerings for Olympic victories gained by their citizens or as a general mark of homage to Olympian Zeus and to contain the dedicated gifts in which the wealth of the sanctuary consisted. Between the temples of Zeus and Hera, the Elean hero Pelops had a sanctuary in the Altis that was open to the sky and surrounded by a wall, with trees and statues within.
The Metroum, or Temple of the Great Mother of the Gods, was a small Doric temple of the 4th century BC just below the treasuries. Because the cult no longer existed in Roman times, the excavated temple contained statues of Roman emperors. A round building of the Ionic order, with Corinthian half columns on the inside, was erected by Philip of Macedon to commemorate his victory over the Greeks at Chaeronea in 338 BC. The building, called the Philippeum, contained gold and ivory statues of Philip, Alexander, and other members of the family. The Prytaneum, in the northwest corner of the Altis, was a building that contained a hearth on which burned a perpetual fire and a banquet room in which the Olympic victors were feasted. The Exedra of Herodes Atticus is a large, lavishly decorated fountain, on an semicircular plan; it was erected by Herodes Atticus in the name of his wife Regilla. On it were displayed some 20 statues of Herodes and his family and of the Roman emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius. The Echo Colonnade was officially called the Stoa Poikile, or Painted Colonnade, from the paintings that used to be on its walls, but it was popularly called the Echo Colonnade because an echo repeated a word seven times or more. The colonnade closed the east side of the Altis and was separated from the east Altis wall, which supported the stadium embankment, by a narrow passage. The colonnade was built soon after the middle of the 4th century BC. Deep down beneath its floor, the starting line of the early classical stadium has been found. Zanes were bronze statues of Zeus erected with money from fines imposed on those who wantonly violated the rules of the Games. The bases of 16 of these have been found just outside the covered entrance to the stadium, the entrance by which the athletes entered. The Bouleuterion, or council house, lies just outside the Altis to the south. It comprised two Doric buildings of different date but of identical oblong form with apsidal ends toward the west. In the space between was a rectangular court at the centre of which stood the statue of Zeus Horkios (Zeus Who Presides over Oaths). Beside this statue the athletes took the oath not to indulge in foul play during the contests. Outside the Altis to the southwest stood the Leonidaeum, a large hostel for the reception of distinguished visitors, which was built in the 4th century BC and remodelled in Roman times. To the northwest were the Palaestra, where wrestlers and boxers trained, and the gymnasium, which included an elaborate entrance gateway and a covered running track. The stadium lay to the east of the Altis. In early classical times it was not cut off from the sanctuary, and one end of the track was in the area directly in front of the temple and the great ash altar of Zeus. About the middle of the 4th century BC the stadium was shifted about 90 yards eastward and a little to the north. The track was surrounded by massive sloping embankments of earth for the accommodation of the spectators, except to the north where the natural slope of the hill sufficed. The western embankment, parallel to which the Echo Colonnade was built, effectively cut the stadium off from the Altis. Connection between the two was maintained by what was called the Krypte, or Covered Entrance, which pierced the embankment and, in Roman times, was covered with a stone vault. This entrance was used by the athletes and the umpires.There were no stone seats in the stadium except for a box on the south side about one-third of the way from the starting line nearest the Altis; here the hellanodikai, or chief judges of the Games, sat. Directly opposite the box was the altar of Demeter Chamyne, from which the priestess of that cult was privileged to watch the Games (married women were excluded from the Olympic festival, but unmarried girls were permitted). The track was about 210 metres long and 32 metres wide and separated from the sloping embankments by a low stone parapet beside which ran an open stone water channel with basins at intervals.
The actual course was marked by stone starting lines at either end. These were about 192.28 metres = 600 Olympic feet. There was space for 20 runners at a time. The classic race was the stade-i.e., one length of the course. There was also a diaulos, two lengths, and a dolichos, or long-distance race, the length of which varied and might be as much as 24 stades, or nearly 3 miles. Other athletic contests were also held in the stadium. This 4th-century stadium has been fully excavated and its track and embankments have been restored. When the stadium embankments were excavated many votive offerings were discovered. Some of these were works of art of various kinds, including bronze statuettes and reliefs and several terra-cotta statues, of which the most noteworthy was a group of Zeus and Ganymede, about half-life-size and dating from around 470 BC. Others were arms or armour that had been dedicated in the sanctuary; the Olympia Museum houses the largest collection of ancient Greek weapons in the world, some of which have identifying inscriptions on them that are interesting historical documents, such as a Persian helmet with the inscription "The Athenians [dedicated the helmet] to Zeus, having taken it from the Medes." The hippodrome where the horse races were held lay south of the stadium in the open valley of the Alpheus. No trace of this has been found. Pausanias gives a long description of the hippodrome and of the elaborate starting machinery.