Olympeion Trip

Hey everyone! I took some time off from studying and ventured into the city of Athens. It was a beautiful day (60 F, sunny, and blue skies). You wouldn't believe where I went yesterday. I was wandering around Athens with one of my roommates from my program and we went to the Temple of Olympeion (Olympian) Zeus. It was amazing!!! I took a whole bunch of pictures from the trip. Here are some of the best! Enjoy!

Here's Hadrian's Arch that's on outside the Olympeion complex. It's huge! Right behind it, although you can't see it, is the Acropolis (which is only a half hour walk from my school). The medium-sized black dot in upper center of the arch is a large limestone cave to Zeus built into the side of the Acropolis.

To the right is what remains of the Temple of Olympeion Zeus. The Corinthian columns are very tall (right). The tops of the columns are very ornate (below). The entire temple is made of white marble. There are three rows of columns. I stood behind the structure and all the columns are perfectly aligned. You can't even see the columns behind the columns in front.

Here's a close-up of the Corinthian columns at the top of the Temple of Olympeion Zeus. To think that the whole structure was hand carved and put together by hand. It's amazing!

One of the columns of the Temple has fallen over. Here's the base of the column along with some of the pieces. As you can see, the column isn't one large marble piece but many stacked carved, marble rounds. It's hard to estimate but it would take two or three people stretching fingertip to fingertip to encompass the column.

This is the remains of the Temple of Apollo Delphinious. This section of the Olympeion wasn't as crowded. In fact, my roommate and I were the only ones there. We walked very, very close to it and thought about entering where the most grass was since there weren't any Do Not Enter signs but as soon as we stepped in, we both decided it was a bad idea. It's strange to describe, but it felt like someone didn't want us there. It's a very interesting and sacred place; you could just tell by standing there. Beyond these ruins, is a huge grove of extremely large aloe plants. Diameters ranged from only a few inches to over six feet across! The stalks for the aloe blossoms were about ten feet tall. It was crazy! We had to be really careful walking through this area because there are cisterns everywhere, and you can fall into if you aren't careful and watch where you're going.


Here are the ruins of some classical houses. It's difficult to tell where each house was. With my untrained eye, I can't even tell how many there were. I think there are three.

Well, back to studying. I hope you enjoyed all the pictures. I'll be posting more pictures soon about all my adventures in Greece!