Olympia: Stories Of Past And Present

It’s with a sense of anticipation that we collect our final hire car – our eleventh of the trip – and leave Kalamata behind after our very brief stay. It may be the last few days of this long adventure but we have some exciting places lined up before we are done.

Throughout the 90-minute drive it is very plain that we are in different territory now; this area experiences much more autumn and winter rainfall than most of Greece, making for the kind of lush greenery which we haven’t seen for many weeks. There are deciduous trees, giant bamboos and even a combine harvester as hard evidence of change, as we cross wide flowing rivers in verdant valleys.

Our next call is Olympia, immensely important city of ancient Greece and of course the birthplace of the original Olympic Games. The ancient site is much bigger than we expect, ruins of this once great city sprawling across wide pine- and plane-clad areas on the slopes of Mount Kronos above the valley of the River Alfeios.

Walking through the archway and out into the “stadium” which was home to those first sporting events so many centuries ago is almost an eerie feeling. To any fan accustomed to entering a modern sports stadium, walking into the Colosseum in Rome is spine tingling: well, entering Olympia is just as evocative, the dead straight running track stretching out ahead of us just as it would have done to those first athletes almost 3,000 years ago.

Incongruously though, the scent in the air is one of English summertime. So fertile is this region that shrub trimming and grass cutting is necessary, and the air is filled with the smell of freshly mown grass – not a smell you would associate with Greece.

The stadium, the surrounding ancient site, and the two attendant museums are all terrific – the archeological museum has literally thousands of artefacts found under the stadium and city, whereas the Museum Of The History Of The Olympic Games has so many fascinating facts that we are kept amused for ages.

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Did you know, for instance, that the original games were held every four years for 1,169 years? Or that in order to prove their worthiness as competitors, athletes were required to walk 56 kilometres from Elis to Olympia immediately before taking part? Or that athletes who cheated were fined – and those fines raised enough money for a large bronze statue of Zeus to be commissioned? Or, indeed, that all athletes had to compete naked – and that the Greek word for “nude” is gymnos, the root of our words “gymnasium” and “gymnastics”? No, nor did we…and there were plenty more facts too!

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Ancient Olympia began life as a sacred city dedicated to Zeus prior to instigation of the Games, quickly becoming an area so sacrosanct that any kind of military presence was unlawful. Later, to enable athletes to travel to Olympia and compete in safety, all parties from all areas were required to sign the Sacred Olympic Truce, thus suspending all warfare and disputes for the duration of the Games.

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The new Olympia village, right next to the ancient site, is a very pleasant, leafy affair with those distinctive characteristics of a small town dominated by its proximity to a major attraction. It’s quiet this evening, the height of season over and most visitors to Olympia coming and going in bus loads without staying overnight, a point we make to the restaurant owner.

“Have you had a good summer this year?”, asks Michaela, as we’ve heard everywhere since Serifos that Greece has enjoyed a bumper year as the recovery from lockdown takes effect.

“Not really”, he sighs, “at first it was so good, lots of people come, then we had the fires, and after the fires, nobody comes”.

“Oh, of course, you had the fires near here. Was it really bad?”

He sighs a big sigh, pulls up a chair and sits down at our table.

“Terrible”, he says quietly, “the fire was everywhere. We were all afraid”. 

“So you had a year of pandemic, then just when things are looking up, you have the fires. That’s a disaster for you”.

“No, not disaster, not for me”. His voice drops further. “Not disaster, just bad. Disaster for people here who lose their home. Now they have nothing”.

He gestures towards one end of the village. “And over here”, he says, “two of my friends die. They are old, and couldn’t escape”. 

We all fall silent.

Michaela somehow manages to say the right thing and the conversation re-starts.

Travelling and meeting people so often gives you a tiny window into someone else’s life. Just occasionally it’s a horror story. 

Driving away from Olympia we get an all too clear view of just how close the horrific fires of the summer came: the extensive burnt areas start immediately outside the village and stretch for square mile after square mile in every direction. Lines of where the fire stopped are so easily identifiable as charred hillside turns to lush green in a sudden line.

It must have been terrifying watching those fires burn closer and closer.