Temple of Olympian Zeus: The Giant Temple of Athens

The Story of the Temple of Olympian Zeus

Just southeast of the Acropolis, a cluster of enormous marble columns rises from a wide open field in the middle of modern Athens. They are all that remains of the Olympieion, a temple to Zeus, king of the gods, that took longer to build than any other in Greece. Its story stretches across some 650 years, from Athenian tyrants to a Hellenistic king and finally a Roman emperor who loved Greek culture.

The project began around 520 BC under the sons of Peisistratus, the tyrants who ruled Athens at the time. They planned a gigantic temple of limestone meant to rival the great temples of Ionia, such as the Heraion of Samos. But when the tyranny was overthrown in 510 BC, work stopped. The democratic Athenians who followed seem to have seen the huge unfinished building as a symbol of arrogance, and it stood abandoned for more than three centuries.

Around 174 BC the Seleucid king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a ruler with a passion for Greek culture, paid to restart the work. He hired a Roman architect named Cossutius, who changed the design to the newer and more ornate Corinthian order and used marble from Mount Pentelicus. Building progressed well until Antiochus died in 164 BC, and once again the temple was left without a roof.

The half finished temple then suffered a strange fate. After the Roman general Sulla captured Athens in 86 BC, he is said to have taken some of its columns to Rome for the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. It was a sign of how much the Romans admired Greek architecture, and also of how freely they helped themselves to it.

The temple was finally completed by the emperor Hadrian, who adored Athens and spent long periods in the city. He dedicated it around 131 AD. The finished building had 104 Corinthian columns, each about 17 meters tall, arranged in double and triple rows around the inner hall. Inside stood a colossal gold and ivory statue of Zeus, and beside it a statue of Hadrian himself. Grateful Athenians also set up many statues of the emperor around the sanctuary.

The triumph did not last long. The temple was probably damaged during a barbarian invasion in the 3rd century AD, and over the following centuries it was quarried for building material, its marble burned for lime or reused in new structures. By modern times only 16 columns remained standing. In 1852 a storm toppled one of them, and it still lies on the ground where it fell, its drums spread out like a row of giant coins, showing just how massive the building once was.

Today 15 columns still stand, and the site is an easy and rewarding stop in central Athens, a short walk from the Acropolis Museum and the Plaka district. At the entrance stands Hadrian's Arch, built around the same time, which marked the boundary between the old city and the new Roman quarter. Walk among the columns, look up at their richly carved capitals and take in the view of the Parthenon on the hill above, two of the great temples of Athens in a single frame.