Athens: Temple of Olympian Zeus (panoramic)

The Temple of Olympian Zeus, also known as the Olympeion (Greek: Ναός του Ολυμπίου Διός, or Naos tou Olimpiou Dios), was the largest temple of the Hellenistic and Roman periods in Greece.

Located southeast of Acropolis, its foundations were laid on the site of an earlier temple by the tyrant Pisistratus in 515 BC, but the work was abandoned when Pisistratus's son, Hippias, was overthrown in 510 BC. During the years of Greek democracy, the temple was left unfinished, because it was thought to be hubris to build on such a scale. In the Politics, Aristotle cited the temple as an example of how tyrannies engaged the populace in great works for the state and left them no time, energy or means to rebel. The work was resumed in the 3rd century BC, during the period of Macedonian domination of Greece, under the patronage of the Hellenistic king Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who hired the Roman architect Cossutius to design the largest temple in the known world. When Antoichus died in 164 BC the work was delayed again. In 86 BC, after Greek cities were brought under Roman rule, the general Sulla took two columns from the unfinished temple to Rome to adorn the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline Hill. These columns influenced the development of the Corinthian style in Rome. In the 2nd century, the temple was taken up again by Hadrian, a great admirer of Greek culture, who finally brought it to completion in 129 (some sources say 131).

The temple was built of marble from Mount Pentelus, and measured 96 metres along its sides and 40 metres along its eastern and western faces. It consisted of 104 Corinthian columns, each 17 meters high, of which 48 stood in triple rows under the pediments and 56 in double rows at the sides. Only 15 of these columns remain standing today. A 16th column was blown down during a gale in 1852 and is still lying where it fell.

Hadrian dedicated the temple to Zeus (known to the Romans as Jupiter), the king of the gods. He erected a giant gold and ivory statue of Zeus in the cella, and placed an equally large one of himself next to it. Nothing remains of these or anything else from the interior of the temple. It is not known when the building was destroyed but, like many large buildings in Greece, it was probably brought down by an earthquake during the mediaeval period, and the bulk of its ruins taken away for building materials.

The temple was excavated in 1889-1896 by Francis Penrose of the British School in Athens (who also played a leading role in the restoration of the Parthenon), in 1922 by the German archaeologist Gabriel Welter and in the 1960s by Greek archaeologists led by Ioannes Travlos.