Complete edition on Panathenaic Stadium
“The Panathenaic Stadium: Its History Throughout the Centuries» is the first complete edition dedicated to Athens’s Panathenaic Stadium, or the Kallimarmaro. Written by Aristea Papanikolaou-Christensen, the book was recently presented by Emeritus Professor at the National Technical University of Athens Charalambos Bouras in the presence of Minister of Culture Evangelos Venizelos. Archaeologist Papanikolaou-Christensen is one of the most experienced researchers of 19th century Athens. Her book illustrates the stadium’s complete chronological history and contains rare photographs. The Historical and Ethnological Society of Greece, the sole Greek cultural foundation to possess original material from the 1896 Olympic Games (donated by Dimitrios Vikelas and Timoleon Filimon, both prominent in the 1896 Games’s organization), commissioned Papanikolaou-Christensen for the work. The National History Museum supervised the publication of the book and the Culture Ministry’s General Secretariat for the Olympic Games financed it. The Panathenaic Stadium was constructed in the time of Lycurgus in the fourth century BC and was first used for the Great Panathenaea Games (330-329 BC). The stadium’s name derives from its length, as it measures one stadium, which in antiquity was a measurement of length. Ruins of Lycurgus’s stadium were revealed during works for its reconstruction, based on drawings by architect Anastassios Metaxas in 1895. The great national cultural benefactor Georgios Averoff undertook all expenses.
