Temple of Olympian Zeus
638 years to build, a Germanic raid in 267 AD to end it — this was the largest temple in Greece, and today 16 columns are what 104 once were.
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Begun in 520 BC by Hippias and Hipparchos, sons of the tyrant Peisistratus, and only finished under Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD, it housed one of the largest cult statues in the ancient world. It was sacked barely a century after completion, then quarried for centuries for building material. What survives still communicates the original ambition.
What to look for
- 16 standing columns out of the original 104 — the gaps between them map the missing scale
- The platform footprint: 41 m wide by 108 m long — pace it out
- The Acropolis rising 500 m to the north-west, giving you the city's ancient axis in a single glance
About 500 m south-east of the Acropolis and 700 m south of Syntagma Square — easy to fold into an Acropolis half-day.
Temple of Olympian Zeus is one of 36 sights worth the detour in Athens, all bundled offline in Voyage GO — download the Athens pack and it sits on your map with no signal, filling your travel passport the moment you walk past.
More to see in Athens
- ParthenonA temple built to celebrate a war victory that went on to become a church, a mosque, and a gunpowder depot — blown apart in 1687 and still being reassembled.
- Acropolis of AthensA flat-topped rock 150 m above the city where Pericles spent the 5th century BC erecting the buildings that still define Athens.
- Platonic Academy (Akadimia Platonos)Aristotle studied here for twenty years before leaving to found his own school — and the word "academy" has followed ever since.
- Classical AthensDemocracy was invented here in 508 BC — and it took a bribe at Delphi to get it started.
- Olympic Stadium Athens "Spyros Louis"Santiago Calatrava's white steel roof arches over the same track where Athens opened the 2004 Olympics — and hosted three Champions League finals.
- ErechtheionThe one Greek temple that broke every rule of classical architecture — and scholars still can't agree on what it was actually called.