Olympia

We left the sacred site of Delphi for Olympia, not without seeing something less sacred in town: These condoms with 3D imprints of original ancient erotic scenes found on ceramics. A great souvenir ... with something similar, I won the "best/worst souvenir contest" our group made!

Anyway, back to business: Olympia was a sacred site for Zeus, and it's the place where the Olympic Games were held in ancient times (surprise!) since at least the 7th century BC. It had been settled since the Neolithic Age, but burned at least once. After the games were forbidden in 426 by the Emperor, the Pagan site slowly fell into oblivion until being excavated by German archeologists in the 19th century. Today, it's the starting place for the Olympic Flame.

This is the gymnasion (sports complex). Actually, "gymnos" means "naked" in Greek ... that's how the athletes trained and competed. It surely was hot anyway, about just like today! Only later, the word "Gymnasium" entered Latin and from there German to signify "higher secondary school". So a word can shift its meaning over time with the things changing! The palestra (gym) is also here ... actually, in Italian the meaning of this word is still the same!

Many buildings were reduced to rubble in an earthquake and floods in the 6th century, and the inhabitants left the place ... the temples however were quite important, although not as much as the ones in Delphi.

Here is the inside of a temple (the outside of which you could see above).Columns to the left and right protect the apsis. The red bricks tell us that this building is from a later period ... as other temples and places are more important, another post will follow! Hang on!

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