With the spectacular global achievements of the 2018 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games recently concluded, it seems fitting to venture with Baron Pierre de Coubertin back to the far more intimate environs of Ancient Olympia where the origins of this worldwide movement still reverberate.  In his Olympic Memoirs, he recalled his first visit to the ancient site of his calling not long after he had launched the modern Olympic Games.

“One evening in November 1894, I had arrived from Athens ... I remember the path that wound up towards the small hill on which the museum and the hotel are situated. Cool, pure air, fragrant with the scent of the fields, wafted from the banks of the Alphaeus. For a moment, the moon lit up a vaporous landscape, then the starry night fell on the two thousand years I had come to recapture. The next day I rose early and sat at my window waiting for the sun to rise, and as soon as its first rays brushed the valley, I hastened alone towards the ruins ... Greek architecture, which I had yet to get to know, is a moral form of architecture that magnifies all dimensions. My meditation lasted all morning and only the sound of the bells of the herds on their way to Arcadia broke the silence.”