Temple of Olympian Zeus

The Olympieion, or Temple of Olympian Zeus, is the ruin of what was once the largest temple in Greece, lying about 500 metres southeast of the Athens Acropolis. Construction began under the tyrant Peisistratos in the sixth century BC but the temple was only completed almost seven hundred years later in 131 AD under Emperor Hadrian, who installed a massive gold-and-ivory statue of the god for the inauguration. The plan called for 104 Corinthian columns seventeen metres high; today fifteen still stand, with a sixteenth lying like a fallen toy after a storm felled it in 1852. Just next to the site rises Hadrian's Arch, which once marked the boundary between the old Greek city and Hadrian's Roman extension. The site is part of the archaeological promenade and accessible with the combined Acropolis ticket.