April 27, 2025 - Greece
Ancient Olympics Museum
The museum consisted of this large area with two side wings.
There were a bunch of sculptures, busts and artifacts but the museum's real value was informative placards like the below, describing everything you ever wanted to know about the ancient Olympic games.
I'll only show this one placard but others included: preparation of the athletes, women at the ancient olympis (basically not only were women forbidden from competing, they could not even watch the games -- women who broke this prohibition were cast down from Mount Tyhpaion!), detailed description of each event and what year they were introduced, the champions experience, the modern Olympic games, the end of the ancient Olympics, the Pythian games at Delphi. .
And bronze shield.
The Discobolus by Myron ("discus thrower"), an ancient Greek sculpture completed at the start of the Classical period in around 460–450 BC that depicts an ancient Greek athlete throwing a discus. Though the original Greek bronze cast is lost, the work is known through numerous Roman copies, either marble, bronze or plaster.
I'm guessing this one is probably plaster. We saw a nice marble copy in the National Roman Museum in Rome.
A mosaic floor depicting athletic games, recovered from a 2nd-early 3rd century AD Roman house in Patra, Greece (just west of the southern end of the Rio - Antirio Bridge).
Patra has a good Archaeological Museum and is the place to catch boats to Italy and the Ionian Islands.
