Temple of Zeus in Olympia
— — the columns the earthquake laid down in a row.
Not only on a wall.
“The temple Libon of Elis built for Zeus around 460 BC, on the sanctuary plain where the Olympic Games began. The colossal seated statue inside was counted among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world; the building itself came down in a sixth-century earthquake. The drums of the Doric columns still lie where they fell, in long ordered rows on the grass at Olympia. — from the studio
Temple of Zeus in Olympia, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Temple of Zeus stood at the heart of the sanctuary of Olympia in the western Peloponnese, in the region of Elis, roughly eighteen kilometres inland from the modern town of Pyrgos. The architect Libon of Elis began work around 470 BC and the temple was completed by about 457 BC, in the Doric order with six columns across the front and thirteen down each side. The wider sanctuary, where the ancient Olympic Games were held, has been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1989.
The walls and columns were cut from a soft local shelly limestone and finished with a fine white stucco so the temple read, from a distance, as marble. The roof tiles and the sculpted pediments were carved in Pentelic and Parian marble brought in for the work. The east pediment told the chariot race of Pelops and Oinomaos; the west pediment showed the Lapiths and Centaurs. Many of those pediment figures now stand in the Archaeological Museum of Olympia, a short walk from the ruins.
Inside stood the chryselephantine statue of Zeus by Phidias, completed around 435 BC and listed among the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The Olympic Games were held in the sanctuary every four years, by tradition from 776 BC until they were suppressed by the emperor Theodosius I at the end of the fourth century AD. The temple is generally thought to have been brought down by the earthquakes of 522 and 551 AD; the column drums still lie in the order they fell.