Panathenaic Stadium

After the fun of the National Gardens we went across the road to the Panathenaic Stadium.

The stadium was originally built in the fourth century BC, was used for hundreds of years for elite sporting events including fights with wild animals, but eventually fell into ruin.

It was rebuilt and restored ready for the first modern Olympics in 1896, and is also the finishing stadium for the annual Athens Marathon.

It is an enormous place that seats 68,000 people and obviously nearly everyone who visited today felt compelled to run around the track, and we were not exceptions to this rule.

We also sat in the best seats in the stadium that belonged to the king and queen of Greece in the 19th century. I pretended to give the thumbs down sign that they do in gladiator films, but that is probably in bad taste.