Panathenaic Stadium

A racecourse stood in the ravine between the hills of Agra and Ardittos from the sixth century BC, hosting the Panathenaic Games, the religious and athletic festival held every four years for Athena, with spectators seated on the natural slopes. In the fourth century BC the Athenian statesman Lykourgos built a stadium of poros stone some 260 metres long, with tiers of stone benches around a track of 204 by 34 metres. Pseudo-Plutarch records that Lykourgos persuaded the owner of the ground, Deinas, to give it to the city, and that he levelled the ravine; an inscription dated 329 BC records a gift of a thousand yoke of oxen from Eudemus of Plataea towards the stadium and theatre. The building is believed to have been ready for the Games of 330/329 BC, though Donald Kyle has suggested Lykourgos may have renovated an existing facility.

Herodes Atticus, an Athenian who rose to the highest echelons of power in Rome, probably promised the rebuilding at the Greater Panathenaia of 139/40, the first festival after his father's death; Philostratus records completion four years later, in 143/4. The new stadium was ashlar masonry in Pentelic marble, seating 50,000 - roughly the capacity of the Stadium of Domitian in Rome, and larger than Classical or Hellenistic stadia, though it rejected the monumental facades and vaulting of Roman building. A marble throne from its front row is held by the British Museum, carved with an olive tree and a table of wreaths, its front leg shaped as an owl.

After the Roman emperor Theodosius I banned Hellenistic festivals and bloody spectacles in the late fourth century the stadium was abandoned and fell into ruin, until a field of wheat covered the site. Crusader knights held feats of arms there during the Latin rule of Athens. Its marble was carried off into other buildings; by the time Athens was declared capital of the Greek kingdom, only the two retaining walls flanking the entrance were left standing as visible remains.

Excavation from 1836 uncovered traces of the stadium of Herodes Atticus, and the architect Ernst Ziller dug the site more thoroughly in 1869-70. Evangelis Zappas had offered around 1856 to pay for re-marbling the stadium, but that scheme came to nothing; his bequest paid instead for the Ilissos bridge before it in 1874. The Zappas Olympics, an early revival of the ancient games, drew audiences of 30,000 in 1870 and 1875.

The Greek government, through Crown Prince Constantine, asked the Egypt-based Greek businessman George Averoff to fund a second refurbishment for the 1896 Olympics. Anastasios Metaxas prepared the reconstruction from Ziller's findings, duplicating the dimensions and design of the second-century building and rebuilding it in Pentelic marble. Averoff gave 920,000 drachmas, and a statue of him by the sculptor Georgios Vroutos was unveiled outside the stadium on 5 April 1896. Only the tiers around the sphendone and the lowest rows were marbled for the games, and the work was finished in 1900.

On 6 April 1896 - 25 March by the Julian calendar then used in Greece, Easter Monday and the anniversary of Greek independence - the games of the First Olympiad opened before an estimated 60,000 spectators, with King George I, Queen Olga and their sons present. Crown Prince Constantine spoke for the organising committee and his father declared the games open. The stadium held the athletics, gymnastics, weightlifting and wrestling, and hosted the Intercalated Games from 22 April to 2 May 1906.

AEK Basketball Club used the stadium from the mid-1960s, and on 4 April 1968 beat Slavia VS Praha there in the European Cup Winners' Cup final before a seated crowd put at 70,000 or 80,000 depending on the account, with thousands more standing. Under the Regime of the Colonels of 1967-74 the stadium held large annual events, among them the Festival of the Military Virtues of the Greeks and commemorations of the coup of 21 April 1967 that brought the regime to power; the dictators used its setting to display their supposed popularity.

The stadium needed no major refurbishment for the 2004 Olympics, when it staged the archery from 15 to 21 August and the marathon finishes, women's on 22 August and men's on 29 August. Owned and run by the Hellenic Olympic Committee and protected as an archaeological site, it finishes the annual Athens Classic Marathon and is the last venue in Greece for the handover of the Olympic flame - passed to Princess Anne on 17 May 2012 for the London games.