Olympia and Delphi, Greece

Next item on the Classical Greece tour agenda was the origin of the Olympic Games. Olympia in the west of Peloponnes has always been one of those places that we’ve always wanted to see, an intriguing and historical city of immense importance to the last century as well as in classical times. The Olympic Games were held at this very place every four years between 8^th century BC and 4^th Century AD. Since 1934 it’s now where the flame is ignited by shining the sun into a parabolic mirror to light a torch and send the Olympic Flame on its way to the host city. It was quite moving to stand beside that very stone where this occurs.

The middle stone here is where the Olympic Flame is lit, every four years.

The site itself covers a large area with mostly foundations in the ground and several columns standing on pedestals, while some structures have been restored and reconstructed. As we walked the streets, it was easy to imagine people living, training and competing here. It was exciting to enter the very first Olympic stadium by walking down a stone corridor, pass under a stone archway and see the wide grassed field flanked on all sides by gently sloping ground for spectators. The judges’ box is still there, seats made of stone situated midway up the athletics track. Perhaps it’s not until you go through the museum that you realise just what you’ve experienced outside, for it is in this building that you’ll see the statues and artefacts that have been found around the site. It really 

We made an early start, arriving at the site at the opening time of 9am, but so did several other people. In fact, several thousand other people. Our tour guide called it “a human river”. More like a flood of tourists. I guess we were a small tributary that contributed to that flood, but it should’ve been very profitable to the site as every one of these people had paid a 12 Euro entry fee.

A typical street in current-day Olympia.

Site of the very first Olympic Games, over two thousand years ago.

After lunch we left the Peloponnes Island by crossing the amazing Rio-Antirrio Bridge to get back onto the Greek mainland. Heading north-east, some very serious mountains were in our way, and we simply drove over them. Our bus climbed a zig-zag road up the side of Mt Parnassus, one of the highest mountains in Greece, to deliver us to our hotel for the night in the mountainside village of Delphi. The view from our hotel window was hard to comprehend. A wide flat valley floor below us was a few kilometres across and covered in millions of olive trees, originally planted in the early 1200s, making them over 800 years old and still producing - quite astonishing. At either side of the valley floor sprung an immense mountain range, with the town of Itea on a bay of blue water in the distance.

Delphi, with dramatic mountains in the background.

Just along the side of the mountain were the ruins of Ancient Delphi. As we climbed up the steep pathways though the sanctuary, with a panoramic view to the south, we couldn’t help wondering why this site had been chosen to build a city in the first place. Legend says the reason is that the god Zeus told them to. The more we learned about Delphi, the more blurred were the lines between fact and legend, and the most mystical was the story of the Oracle. It was supposedly a woman who would enter a trance and utter strange sayings. Priests would decipher these ravings and turn them into prophecies. It’s the stuff of legend, and yet walking these ruins made the legend all the more real.

Dramatic Delphi - foreground and background are truly incredible. 

Despite a couple of sore knees, Anne was determined to walk to the top of these ruins, which was marked by an astonishing stadium. While the climb was arduous with stairs, gravel paths and slippery smooth rocks, we slowly scrambled ever-upwards in mid-30 degree heat. Very proud to say that she made it. Coming down was even slower, but the lure of a comfy air-conditioned bus was a good incentive.

The stadium at the top of the Delphi mountainside.