Every four years, for more than a thousand years, a truce was declared across the Greek world so that athletes could travel to Olympia. The sanctuary lies in a green valley in the western Peloponnese, where the Alfeios river meets a smaller stream, below the pine-covered Hill of Kronos. The traditional date of the first Games is 776 BC, and they carried on until the Roman emperor Theodosius put an end to pagan festivals at the end of the fourth century AD. The statue of Zeus made by Phidias for the temple here, a giant seated figure of gold and ivory, was one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, though it has long since vanished.
What survives is the field of ruins: the temple of Hera, the stadium with its stone starting line, the palaestra and the workshop of Phidias. Each time a modern Games is held, the Olympic flame is lit here in front of the temple of Hera, using a parabolic mirror and the rays of the sun. The museum is excellent, with the sculptures from the temple of Zeus and the bronze helmets and votive offerings left by athletes and cities.
The ride that brings you here from Mystras, the Byzantine hill-town near Sparta, crosses the high interior of the Peloponnese, a landscape of mountains, gorges and small villages. The roads climb through fir and chestnut, with plenty of bends and long views, then drop into the olive groves of the western plain. Surfaces are generally good on the main roads and patchy on the minor ones, and goats and sheep are frequent. Heat in July and August is intense, so start early and carry water. Autumn is lovely, with soft light and cool air.
Archaia Olympia, the village by the site, has a little over a thousand people and a lot of tavernas. For fuel, Pyrgos, about seventeen kilometres away, with twenty-two thousand people, is the town to count on, though pumps can be found nearer. The site closes in the late afternoon, and the light then is superb.
Try the local honey and the sheep's cheese, and a glass of cold white wine in a taverna under the plane trees is a fitting end to the day.