Athens 1896: Olympic venues overview
Seven competition venues were used at the Olympic Games Athens 1896, five of which remain in use today: Panathenaic Stadium (athletics, artistic gymnastics, weightlifting), Athens Lawn Tennis Club (tennis), the Bay of Zea (swimming), the Zappeion (fencing), and the Velodrome (track cycling, tennis). Three of the competition venues were existing, three were new and one was temporary.
The temporary venue (the route of the road cycling event and marathon) was dismantled after the Games, and one of the new venues, the Kallithea Stand (shooting) was demolished. The four existing venues all remain in use. Most of the venues continue to host elite sporting events, with two of them staging competitions at the Olympic Games Athens 2004 and a third used as the main communications centre for that event. Some are also open to visitors and host events such as conferences and concerts.
An eighth venue was set up to stage the Athens 1896 rowing competition, but the event was cancelled due to stormy conditions. The venue is still in use.
Founded in 1895 and the oldest tennis club in Greece, the Athens Lawn Tennis Club was one of the Games’ three new venues. It now hosts local and international competitions, including Greece’s home Davis Cup matches. Open to both members and visitors, it is also used for coaching and practice.
The third new venue was the 7,000-capacity velodrome at Neo Phaliron, which was refurbished to include other sporting facilities in 1899. Since then, the stadium was reconstructed and converted to a football stadium, carrying the name “George Karaiskakis”. For the Olympic Games Athens 2004, the Karaiskakis Stadium hosted several football matches.
An existing venue, the Panathenaic Stadium was the main venue for several of the sports contested at the inaugural Olympic Games in 1896. In the years following, it continued to serve as the principal stadium in Athens, staging numerous and diverse athletic competitions and cultural activities. There was no official Olympic Village at Athens 1896.
The Zappeion opened in 1888 for the purposes of exhibiting Greek art and antiquities. For the inaugural Olympic Games Athens 1896, the building’s circular atrium played host to the fencing competition.
The Zappeion has fulfilled numerous functions since hosting the Athens 1896 fencing competition, acting as a radio station and then a hospital during the Second World War. In more recent times, the Zappeion served as the home of the Organising Committee for the Olympic Games Athens 2004 between 1998 and 1999. It also served as the main communications centre during the 2004 Games. A palatial building situated close to the Panathenaic Stadium, it is now a conference and exhibition centre and a member of the Historic Conference Centres of Europe association.