Archaeological Site of Olympia - UNESCO World Heritage Site

Hey everyone, welcome to World Heritage Journey. Today we're at the archaeological site of Olympia in southern Greece. So this is the famous Olympia, site of the ancient Olympic Games, where between around 1000 BC and 400 AD athletes would come here from across Greece to participate in the Olympic Games every four years. It was also a sanctuary devoted to the father of the gods, Zeus, and there's heaps of stuff here to see, so let's get moving. Behind me you can see the Temple of Zeus, and this is the heart of the whole complex here, because of course Zeus was the most important person to all of the Greeks. Now the temple dates from around 500 BC, and it's considered to be the father of all Doric order temples, which is a name for a particular style of Greek temple. Now unfortunately we don't really know what this looked like because it has been lost to time, though it's described in very similar ways to the Temple at Paestum, which we actually went to last year, and I'll put a link to that video just up here. Now inside the temple was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, a 13 meter high statue of Zeus made out of wood, ivory and gold. And so this is it, the stadium, and this is where the ancient Olympic Games were largely held. Now the running track you can see is about 200 meters from end to end, and they would have wrestling and boxing and all the other athletic games out here as well. The arena here would have held about 45,000 spectators, standing room only, there were no seats here, unlike in many Greek theatres and that sort of thing. The only seats is the stone box for the officials and very important people, and it's just great to come here and see that it's not really any different from what we have today. Behind me you can see a really unusual building known as the Philippaeon, and it was built around 300 BC in honour of King Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great. Now it's really unusual because it's the only temple here that's circular, it's the only temple here that's dedicated to humans rather than gods, and it's also the only building here that uses Ionic-style columns rather than Doric-style. One of the things I've been really enjoying about today is just seeing how little things change despite huge differences in time. The building we're standing in now is known as the Leonadeion, after its benefactor Leonidas of Naxos, and it dates from around 330 BC. It's actually a building that was constructed to house administrators and officials for the ancient Olympics, and it's just really interesting to see how that's just no different really from the modern Olympics we have today, though a slightly different scale I suppose. And then in the centre of the building what I also find fascinating is that when the Romans turned up they did what they do best, they dug up the centre courtyard of the building and put in a swimming pool. So despite being in use for almost 1500 years, by the end of the 4th century Rome's new Christian emperors decided that festivities like the Olympics were too much in celebration of pagan gods, and eventually the Olympics was completely banned. By the 6th century a pair of earthquakes laid waste to most of the buildings here, and they sat in ruins until the archaeologists started arriving in the 19th century. But it's been a really interesting day just wandering around and really feeling the connection, I suppose, between the ancient Olympics and the modern ones. It's been really, really cool. But that's it from me, thank you so much for watching. Give me a thumbs up if you liked the video, leave me a comment, let me know what you thought. Hit subscribe if you'd like to see more from the World Heritage Journey. I'll see you next time.