Museum of the History of the Excavations at Olympia

Right next to the Museum of the History of the Olympic Games in Antiquity, visitors will find this informative building, which was renovated in 2004. The Olympia excavation is one of the earliest to be carried out in Greece and it provided an example for the methodology that has been implemented for other excavations that followed. It began in 1875 by the German Archaeological Institute—after the signing of an agreement between the Greek and German states, which defined the terms and obligations of each part.

At the museum, visitors will see a model of the sanctuary made by Hans Schleif according to the plan of W. Dörpfeld. The exhibitions include the engravings of the plain of Olympia before the beginning of the excavations, photographs of the first campaigns, the historic agreement of 1875 between Greece and Germany, instruments and excavation tools, documents associated with the excavations, photographs of more recent excavations, and other memorabilia.