Origins

Olympia, Greece. Festival of Zeus held every four years for over a millennium...

Olympia, Greece. The sanctuary of Zeus and the original Olympic site...

Olympia, Greece. Footraces for young women in honor of Hera...

Much Wenlock, England. The village festival that inspired Pierre de Coubertin...

Athens, Greece. A Greek merchant funded the first modern revivals...

Paris, France. The congress that founded the IOC...

Athens, Greece. The unofficial intercalated Games that steadied the movement...

Delphi, Greece. The festival of Apollo, second in prestige among the Panhellenic Games...

Nemea, Greece. Biennial games of Zeus with a crown of wild celery...

Isthmus of Corinth, Greece. Biennial festival of Poseidon on the Panhellenic circuit...

Chipping Campden, England. Country sports festival begun by Robert Dover in the early 1600s...

Paris, France. Revolutionary national games on the Champ de Mars...

Liverpool, England. Amateur Olympic festivals of John Hulley and Charles Melly...

London, England. The first national Olympic style games in Britain, at the Crystal Palace...

Stockholm, Sweden. The winter sports festival that preceded the Winter Olympics...

Tara, Ireland. Ancient Irish funeral games, a claimed elder of the Greek Olympics...

Athens, Greece. The city festival of Athena with athletics, music and chariot races...

Athens, Greece. The marble stadium rebuilt to open the modern Olympic era...

Olympia, Greece. German archaeologists unearthed the shrine that fired the revival...

Prague, Czech lands. Mass gymnastics festivals that shaped modern Olympic pageantry...

Paris, France. Coubertin first proposed reviving the Olympic Games...

St Louis, USA. A racist side show at the 1904 Games, now remembered with shame...

Paris, France. The sporting festival of the victorious Allied armies...

Paris, France. Alice Milliat forced the door open for women athletics...

London, England. The fourth and last of the Milliat womens festivals...

Frankfurt, Germany. The labor movement staged its own mass Olympics...

Tel Aviv, Palestine. The Jewish world games, first staged under the British Mandate...

Paris, France. The student festival that grew into the Universiade...

Aylesbury, England. Archery on a hospital lawn grew into the Paralympics...