Mount Olympus Is Now a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Yes: Mount Olympus is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The World Heritage Committee inscribed the wider area of Mount Olympus as a Mixed cultural-and-natural prop…

Homer and Hesiod Codify Mount Olympus as Home of the Gods

Around 700 BCE, Hesiod's Theogony and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey establish Mount Olympus as the mythical seat of the Twelve Olympian gods, led by Zeus. This is mythology…

Alexander the Great Sacrifices to Zeus at Dion

At Dion, the Macedonian sanctuary city at Olympus's foot, Alexander the Great holds a nine-day festival and sacrifices to Zeus and the Muses before invading Persia. Unli…

First Recorded Ascent of Mytikas, Olympus's Highest Peak

Swiss climbers Frederic Boissonnas and Daniel Baud-Bovy, guided by Greek hunter Christos Kakkalos, make the first recorded ascent of Mytikas (2,918m). The summit, long c…

Mount Olympus Declared Greece's First National Park

By royal decree, Olympus becomes Greece's first National Park, protecting a core zone of roughly 40 square kilometres around the upper massif - a domestic Greek designat…

Mount Olympus Designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve

Olympus joins UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere (MAB) Programme as a Biosphere Reserve - a separate UNESCO programme from the World Heritage Convention, with its own criter…

Mount Olympus Protected Under the EU's Natura 2000 Network

Olympus (site code GR1250001) is listed as a Special Protection Area under the EU Birds Directive, later also a Special Area of Conservation under the Habitats Directive…

Mount Olympus Added to Greece's UNESCO Tentative List

Greece's Ministry of Culture formally adds 'the broader region of Mount Olympus' to the country's UNESCO Tentative List - the mandatory first step before any World Herit…

Mount Olympus Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site

The World Heritage Committee unanimously inscribes 'the wider area of Mount Olympus' as a Mixed cultural-and-natural property, under criteria (vi) and (x). It becomes Gr…