The Olympian site: Open May - Oct daily 8am - 7pm; Nov - April Mon - Fri 8am - 5pm, Sat and Sun 8:30am - 3pm;
6 euros, or 9 euros for combined site and museum).
Variously signposted as the New Museum, The Olympic Site museum (open Mon noon -7pm, Tues-Sun 8am-7pm; winter Mon 10:30 am-5 pm,Tues-Sun 8:30-5; 6 euros admission) lies north of the sanctuary about 200 meters.
In the Peloponnesian prefecture of Elia, Olympia is located in the beautiful valley of the Alpheios River and was never a city but always a sanctuary.
The nearby modern town of Olymbia was created after the re-discovery of the ancient site only in the 20th century and to serve visitors to this ancient center of Panhellenic sporting events (Olympic games) that were held every four years for over a thousand years (776BC-394AD).
Pelasgians are thought to have been the original settlers of this area of the Peloponnese e.g.. Sea People, from the Greek word for 'open sea' (pelagos).
These original settlers inhabited the area from 3000 BC and were forced by the Mycenaean's, during the subsequent millennium into the central mountains, The Mycenaean's were in turn conquered by the Achaeans around 1250BC, bringing with them the Olympian sky gods, which they imposed on the native population. The Pelasgians were thought to have worshipped the Earth Mother as the nurturing power of nature and of the underworld.
The renaming of the rounded hill that symbolized the Earth Mother as Mt. Kronos in honor of the father of Zeus, summarized the superseding of masculine sky gods upon the earlier feminine Mother goddess. Interestingly, Gaia (the Earth Mother) was wife of Ouranos/Uranus and mother of Kronos, who had overthrown his father and was in turn supplanted by his son.
The games that began in 776BC (known as the Festival of Zeus) manifested a compromise between the two religious systems and between their calendars, which were respectively lunar (feminine) and solar (masculine). The four-year cycles between games (known as Olympiads) derive from the alternation of these two calendars of 49 and 50 months.