Olympia

Olympia is a sanctuary of Zeus in Elis, where the Olympic Games were held every four years. Tradition dates the first games to 776 BC, and the sacred precinct was called the Altis.

The Temple of Hera was built around 600 BC, and the mid-fifth-century BC Temple of Zeus housed the gigantic chryselephantine statue of the god made by Pheidias. The games drew crowds under the protection of an Olympic truce.

Under Rome the festival was opened to all citizens of the empire, but the last ancient Olympiad was celebrated in 393 AD, shortly before the Christian emperor Theodosius I banned pagan cults; the Temple of Zeus was destroyed around 426, and floods buried the site in the seventh century. The English antiquarian Richard Chandler rediscovered it in 1766, and French and German excavators uncovered the ruins from 1829 onward.