Olympia home of the Olympic Games

Olympia 

Monday – Hard to believe but this is our penultimate day!
We checked out slowly from our hotel and drove to Chora to see the museum with all the sculptures from Nestor’s palace was great. Especially the reconstruction in water colours.
 
Stopped off for lunch in a lovely little town where the menu was hand written in a school notebook!
 
Driving upwards to Olympia, the original site of the Olympic Games. Created to honour Zeus and athletic prowess, and bring all Greek nations together in 776 BCE.
Every four years the entire Greek world would stop wars and call a truce for athletes and spectators to travel to the games safely. Like today the Olympic games brought people from all different areas together in the spirit of competition and togetherness.
There was also drug testing in the ancient world so drugs like animal blood wouldn’t give unfair advantages, however the job fell to the urine tasters…..eww.
 
Olympia is a lovely site in the late afternoon, we saw the gymnasium where athletes trained nude, the swanky hotel where visiting dignitaries stayed, the huge temple of Zeus where the bases weigh 2 tonnes!. See below pic of Greg with the bases.
 
 
Above left is the Palaestra where athletes would wrestle and work out naked covered in olive oil. Sometimes they’d exercise to music of a flute.
The large covered colonades meant they could still train if it was raining.
 
The temple and other buildings all fell during several earthquakes later around 5th century CE. The columns were all made of local limestone not marble and you can still see the shells in the limestone.
 
The stadium where all the races were run is still there, and spectators sat on the grassy hill to watch. Apparently women weren’t allowed except for a priestess (all those nude men!)

7 Wonders of the Ancient World

Check out the scale of people to statue!
If you are a frequent reader you will know that I love all things ancient history. One of my favourite things to check off is the 7 Wonders of the Ancient World. 
They are:
Great Pyramid of GizaHanging Gardens of BabylonTemple of ArtemisStatue of Zeus at Olympia (here!), Mausoleum at Halicarnassus (check out our Bodrum, Turkey blog), Colossus of Rhodes (blog to come) and the Lighthouse of Alexandria. Only 3 of which are still around today but it is my mission to get to all the sites.
 
Here used to stand the famed Statue of Zeus – now sadly gone, but it sounded amazing. A chryselephantine statue, created by the great sculptor Phidias created in wood and ivory, decorated with gold and precious metals was reportedly carried off to Constantinople….and lost.
You can read more about it here on Wikipedia.
 
 

Female Athletes

Posing as a Greek statue!

Women had their own festival, the Heraea, in celebration of Hera.   At the Herea, the girls ran and competed in physical games clothed in short dresses that had the left shoulder and breast bare. I know this is something the Greeks accused the Amazon women of having but I did some reading and historians seem to agree this is the female athletes dress.

The modern Olympic Flame: The photo on the left shows the altar of Hera, where our modern Olympic torch is lit every 4 years. Since the beginning Priestesses use a mirror and the sun light the torch which is carried across the oceans to open the games to this day.

Driving onwards towards Patras we stopped by a tiny town to ease our hunger. The locals were amazed to see tourists (clearly not a tourist destination). We made friends with the daughter of the taverna owner, who collected tins from all over the world. She begged us to send her a metal tin from london – which we will do!
She was going to travel the world this year but because of the Greek economic crisis her wages were cut in half, then medical expenses took most of her savings….so she’s not sure when she will be able to travel. I gave her a nice tip to help with savings…..I hope she gets to London one day.

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Jade & Greg

She is a coffee & history lover, he is a food loving photographer & together they fight crime...... I mean travel the world!

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