Temple of Zeus

The largest temple on mainland Greece when it was completed around 457 BC, the Temple of Zeus once sheltered the most famous statue in the ancient world. Today only the immense fallen column drums remain, toppled by earthquakes in the 6th century AD and left exactly where they landed — a landscape of enormous stone discs that gives a visceral sense of the temple's original scale. At its peak the building measured 64 metres long and 28 metres wide, with 34 Doric columns.

The temple's sculptural programme was extraordinary. The triangular pediments depicted the preparations for the chariot race between Pelops and Oenomaus (east) and the battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs (west). Twelve metopes showed the Labours of Hercules. Casts of these sculptures are displayed in the Archaeological Museum; the originals are among the finest surviving examples of early Classical Greek art.

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The chryselephantine statue of Zeus that once stood inside this temple was carved by the sculptor Pheidias around 435 BC and stood roughly 13 metres tall — so enormous that ancient writers joked Zeus would knock his head on the ceiling if he stood up. It was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and was eventually taken to Constantinople, where it was destroyed in a fire in the 5th century AD. Not a fragment of it survives.

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