Temple of Zeus at Olympia: Home of a Wonder of the World

The Story of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia

In a green valley in the western Peloponnese, where the Alfeios and Kladeos rivers meet beneath the wooded hill of Kronos, lies Olympia, the most famous sanctuary of Zeus in the Greek world. According to tradition, the Olympic Games were first held here in 776 BC, and for more than a thousand years athletes came from every corner of the Greek world to compete in honor of the king of the gods. At the center of it all stood his great temple.

The temple was built by the people of Elis, who controlled the sanctuary, and it was completed around 456 BC. Its architect was Libon of Elis. It was a massive Doric temple, with 6 columns across each end and 13 along each side, built of local shell limestone and coated in fine white stucco to look like marble. For decades it was the largest temple in the Peloponnese, a confident statement of the power of Zeus and the prestige of the Games.

Its sculptures were among the finest of the early classical age. The east pediment, facing the entrance, showed the preparations for the chariot race between Pelops and King Oenomaus, a myth linked to the origins of the Games. The west pediment showed the battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs at a wedding feast, with a calm and commanding Apollo in the center. The metopes above the porches showed the twelve labors of Heracles, the hero who was said in one tradition to have founded the Olympic Games.

Around 435 BC, the sculptor Phidias, fresh from his work on the Athena Parthenos in Athens, created a statue of Zeus for the temple. It showed the god seated on a magnificent throne, made of gold and ivory over a wooden frame and about 12 meters tall, so large that ancient writers joked he would hit the roof if he stood up. It became one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Archaeologists have even found Phidias's workshop at Olympia, along with a small cup inscribed with the words I belong to Phidias.

Olympia remained a center of the Greek world for centuries. Kings and cities filled it with treasuries and statues, and the Romans continued to celebrate the Games. But as Christianity spread, the old festivals faded, and the Games came to an end in the late 4th century AD, traditionally linked with the decrees of the emperor Theodosius I against pagan worship. The statue of Zeus was eventually lost, and according to one tradition it was taken to Constantinople, where it was destroyed in a fire.

The temple itself was brought down by powerful earthquakes in the 6th century AD. Its enormous column drums fell in neat rows, and over the following centuries floods and landslides buried the site under thick layers of earth. German archaeologists began systematic excavations in 1875, revealing the temple and its sculptures. The surviving pediment figures and metopes are now the highlights of the Archaeological Museum of Olympia.

Today Olympia is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the most moving places in Greece. You can walk through the ancient gymnasium, past the workshop of Phidias, and stand on the huge platform of the Temple of Zeus, surrounded by its toppled columns. One column was put back up in 2004, the year Athens hosted the Olympic Games, giving a sense of the building's original height. Then follow the vaulted tunnel into the ancient stadium, where athletes once raced in honor of the king of the gods.