Old and modern Olympia

What is the best way to concentrate in a perfect alchemy the origins of history, the ethics of sport on its birth, the ancient culture, the great classical myths and the modern world? Our excursion will offer you the chance to know all these aspects in one site: Olympia: an expert guide will take you inside the ancient Olympia, a complex of temples, priest and athlete houses and public buildings. Located in a valley along the Alfeo river, in the north-western Poloponnese, the city hosted, every four years, the famous sport competitions in order to honor Zeus called Olympic games. Here, for the first time in 776 b.c. a list of winners were written, possibly the result of the first Olympic games in history. Among the ruins of ancient temples, along the cobble stones of ancient streets, once used by coaches, you shall dive into the past in that tense and joyful atmosphere in which, for five very long days, the athletes were competing in the different disciplines: wrestling, coach and horse races, pentathlon and pancratium (a primordial boxing). We will learn small secrets about the competition where only male Greek athletes were allowed, then it was opened to the young Romans. We will discover anecdotes about women and slaves excluded from the town, from the temples and the terraces, punished by a terrible death by being dropped from a nearby cliff. Stop in the ancient squares where merchants and citizens used to meet for business. At the end of the guided tour, you can discover the streets of the modern town of Olympia to come back to reality from the magic of the past. You may taste a typical and strong Greek coffee, a small glass of ouzo or purchase a souvenir to remember, this piece of history where you have been protagonist of a dream for a few emotionally intense hours.