The Olympieion is the field of enormous columns you pass between the Acropolis and the National Garden, and it holds a record no other Greek temple comes close to: it took roughly 640 years to build, and it stood complete for less than two hundred.
Fifteen columns are standing today. There were 104.
Diagram by Greece Trips. Free to reuse with credit - CC BY 4.0.
The numbers are the story
Work began in the sixth century BC under the tyrant Peisistratos and his sons, who wanted a temple to rival the great sanctuaries of Ionia. The tyranny fell, and the project stopped for centuries. Democratic Athens seems to have regarded the half-built thing as a monument to overreach and left it where it stood.
It was restarted under a Hellenistic king, stopped again, and finally completed by the emperor Hadrian in the second century AD, who put a colossal statue of Zeus inside it and one of himself alongside.
Within a couple of centuries it was ruined. What you see is what survived quarrying, earthquake and time.
What is actually there
Fewer things than at most Athenian sites, and they are very large:
- The standing columns, roughly 17 metres tall and Corinthian. That order is the reason the temple reads as Roman rather than classical Greek, despite its archaic start.
- One fallen column, brought down by a storm in the nineteenth century and left exactly where it landed. It is the most instructive object on the site: it lies in its separate drums like a stack of coins, and shows you how the things were built.
- The platform, worth walking to the far end of to grasp the footprint.
- Hadrian’s Arch, just outside the fence, marking the boundary between the old city and the new quarter Hadrian built.
It is a twenty-minute site, and that is fine
Be realistic about the visit. There is no museum here, no reconstructed interior, nothing to climb. It is a platform, a field and fifteen columns.
What it gives you is scale, which photographs do not carry. Standing at the foot of a 17-metre column with the Acropolis on the skyline behind does something a picture cannot. Twenty to thirty minutes is enough.
When to go
The site is open, exposed and treeless. In July and August the middle of the day is punishing, and overhead light makes the columns flat and shadowless. Early morning, or the last hour before closing, is better for both comfort and photographs, when the marble goes warm.
It is also clearly visible from the pavement on Vasilissis Olgas, and plenty of people decide that is enough. If your time in Athens is short that is a defensible call, because this is the rare site where the view from outside conveys most of it.
Getting there
It sits at the corner of Vasilissis Olgas and Amalias, a few minutes on foot from Syntagma or Akropoli metro, and directly beside Hadrian’s Arch.
It used to be one of the sites on the combined ticket that covered the Acropolis and several others, but that ticket ended on 1 April 2025, so the temple is now a separate paid stop with its own ticket. Weigh that ticket against twenty minutes and the view you get free from the pavement, and check the current price on tickets.hh.gr before buying anything.
What to take from this page
Go if twenty minutes of scale is worth its own ticket to you, go early or late, and give it half an hour. Look at the fallen column rather than only the standing ones, because it is the piece that explains how the rest went up.
Last checked September 2026. Ticket terms and opening hours change - see our editorial policy.
Common questions
How many columns are left at the Temple of Olympian Zeus?
Fifteen are standing, of an original 104. A sixteenth lies where it fell in a storm in the nineteenth century.
How long did the Temple of Olympian Zeus take to build?
About 640 years. Begun in the sixth century BC under Peisistratos, abandoned for long stretches, and completed by the emperor Hadrian in the second century AD.
Is the Temple of Olympian Zeus worth visiting?
For the scale, yes, though it now needs its own ticket rather than riding on a combined Acropolis ticket. It is a twenty-to-thirty minute site with no museum, so judge it as a short stop rather than a morning.
How long do you need at the Olympieion?
Twenty to thirty minutes suits most visitors.
Is it included in the Acropolis combined ticket?
Not any more. The Athens combined ticket ended on 1 April 2025, and the Temple of Olympian Zeus now has its own ticket. The Acropolis ticket covers the rock and its Slopes.
What is the arch next to the Temple of Olympian Zeus?
Hadrian’s Arch, which marked the division between the old Greek city and the new quarter Hadrian built around the finished temple.
Next
Read things to do in Athens, the Acropolis and the Ancient Agora, or pick a base with where to stay in Athens.