The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World - The Statue of Zeus at Olympia

By Paul Curtis
Author

Constructed in 450 B.C., the statue of Zeus at Olympia was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. This region of Western Greece gave its name to the Olympic games, originally an ancient Hellenic festival also held to honor Zeus. The Temple was designed in the simple Doric style
 and constructed to house the statue which became the focal point of the Temple.

The Athenian sculptor Pheidias was conscripted to raise this "sacred" building. He began construction planning in 440 BC. 
The statue was created from metal, ivory and sculpted marble; his head was wreathed with olive sprays, in his right hand he held a gold and ivory victory figure and in his left an inlaid golden scepter. 
He wore golden sandals and his throne was decorated with ebony and ivory gold and other precious metals and every kind of gemstone and when the throne figure was completed it was almost too big to fit in the temple. 
Many worshippers visited the temple over the following 450 years and some work was needed to restore the ageing masterpiece during the reign of the Roman Emperor Caligula who tried to have the statue transported to his palace in Rome, but the plan failed to materialize. 
After the temple of Zeus was ordered closed and the Olympic Games banned in 391 AD by emperor Theodosius I, Olympia was struck repeatedly by earthquakes, landslides and floods.
 By the time the temple was badly damaged by fire in the fifth century AD the statue had been transported to the city of Constantinople to the palace owned by a wealthy Greek.
 It survived there until 462 AD when a severe fire destroyed it.
 Today nothing remains at the site of the old temple except fallen columns and debris and nothing remains at all of the greatest work of art in Greek sculpture.