Athens – Panathenaic Stadium (Part 3 – The Museum)
There’s a small museum at the stadium, which is reached by this rather impressive tunnel where the athletes would have once run out from to face their moment of truth.
As the stadium once looked.
Marble cutters merrily cutting blocks, which must have been something of a civil engineering project to put together.
The interior of the museum.
Every Olympic Games now has a torch which all have a unique design which reflects the characteristics and culture of the host nation. Above are torches from the Winter Olympics, which used to be held in the same year as the main Olympics but they are now held two years after them. These torches are from Innsbruck (1976 – Austria), Lake Placid (1980 – United States) and Calgary (1988 – Canada).
A poster from the first Olympic Games that was partly held at this stadium in 1896.
A poster from the 1908 London Games.
I hadn’t much thought about it, but I don’t think that I realised that the Olympic Games were held in Belgium in 1920 although Richard thinks he might remember it. Here are posters from Paris 2024, Belgium 1920 and Paris 1924, as well as the Paris torch from 2024.
Posters from the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam and the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
A poster from the notorious 1936 Olympic Games which were held in Berlin.
The poster from the 1948 London Olympics.
And the torch from 1948.
The torch and poster from the 2012 London Olympics, which feels quite a long time ago now.
This is one of the 204 petals, representing the competing nations who took part, from the single unified cauldron where the Olympic Flame burnt during the 2012 Olympics in London. I did get to see the opening of the Paralympic Games in 2012, so I would have seen this. Well, probably not seen it very clearly, but it was there at the same time as me so that’ll have to do.
This is exciting, the altar from where the High Priestess lights the Olympic Flame for its journey to the city that organises the Olympic Games.
This is a replica of the concave mirror which is used to catch the rays of the sun which start the Olympic flame.
It was an interesting museum and the walk to it added to the excitement of the whole arrangement. There was some information and exhibit from every Olympic Games that have yet been held, with the posters from each of the events being interesting to show how design had changed over the decades. Maybe I’ll come back in a few years and see what they have from the 2028 Olympics which are being held in Los Angeles and the 2032 Olympics which are being held in Brisbane, not to mention the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, the 2030 Winter Olympics in France and the 2034 Winter Olympics in the United States.
