The Origin of the Olympics
Ancient Olympia, in the green Alpheios river valley of the western Peloponnese, held the Olympic Games from 776 BC to 393 AD — a period of 1,169 years without a single cancellation, during which all wars across the Greek world were suspended for the duration of the festival. The site today contains the Temple of Zeus (whose chryselephantine statue — the Zeus of Olympia — was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World), the original stadium, and one of Greece's finest site museums holding the surviving pedimental sculptures and the Nike of Paionios. FFGR Greece drives you from Athens in a Rolls-Royce Ghost (4 hours through the Peloponnese highway) with a specialist classical archaeologist guide, arriving at opening time.