Image Details

The Art Archive/Dagli Orti

Only naked athletes and the judges who officiated at the games were permitted to pass through this entranceway, described by the second-century A.D. writer Pausanias as “the secret entrance.” The arched gate, newly constructed at the time of Pausanias’s visit, opened into a vaulted tunnel that led to Olympia’s stadium, which was built in the fourth century B.C. on the site of a running track (dromos) dating centuries earlier.