In the shadow of Acropolis and beside the ancient river Ilisos, a sublime temple used to lie; its ruins can still be seen by visitors of the city today (15 columns out of 104 in total). It is the temple of Olympian Zeus (Olympieion) and the sanctuaries that surround it. The Roman architect Vitruvius considered the Olympieion to be a perfect example of architecture made of marble and one of the greatest temples of the ancient world. It took centuries for the temple to be completed and it was faced with many disastrous events through the centuries.
Since prehistoric times the area was considered holy- it has been linked to the worship of chthonic deities and Attica's local heroes. According to Pausanias, the foundations of the temple were laid by the mythical progenitor of the Greeks, Deucalion. However, the archaeological evidence reveals that the first attempt to construct a temple on the site was made by the tyrant Peisistratus in 515 BC. but construction ceased with the fall of the tyranny in 510 BC. Aristotle in his Politics, using the temple of Zeus as an example, criticized the policy of tyrants to engage citizens in ambitious projects in order not to leave them the time and space to think freely. The temple was finally left unfinished for 400 years when in 174 BC. Antiochus IV attempted to complete it. Nevertheless, the temple was finally completed around 130 AD. by the lover of all things Athenian, Roman Emperor Hadrian.
A temple dedicated to Apollo (450 BC) was built close to the Olympieion together with other sanctuaries dating back from the classical era to the late Roman years. Along the banks of Ilisos River there were other notable sanctuaries, the most fabled being that of Artemis Agrotera (mentioned by Plato and Pausanias); the foundations of that temple are still preserved in Mets neighborhood. With the prevalence of Christianity, the sanctuaries declined and therefore from the 10th c. A.D. an extensive Byzantine quarter with houses and workshops (tanneries, oil press, pottery workshops, etc.) were built on the ruins of the temple of Zeus.
Centuries later, in October 1852, a terrifying storm passed over Athens. One of the remaining columns collapsed- with people in the capital feeling it was a "national disaster". A few days later, the poet Aristotelis Valaoritis wrote a poem about that event praising the beauty of the fallen column more than its standing counterparts. A hundred years later, the poet would be dismayed to see the bullet holes left on the marble columns as a result of the Civil War.
In this Thematic Exhibition you can discover the Temple of Zeus through photographs, paintgins and drawings.
The exhibition contains items from the following institutions:
