Reconstruction drawings of Dion at the archaeological park, Macedonia, Greece.
The sign at the archaeological park reads: "The peaks of Olympos and the plains of Pieria are mentioned for the first time in Homer's liad and in the Homeric Hymns.
Dion, the sacred place of Zeus, is first mentioned by Thucydides. According to ancient tradition, the first altar in the sanctuary of Zeus was placed there by Deukalion after the ancient flood. Worshipped at Dion together with the Olympian Zeus were the Muses, who had been born a little further up, on the slopes of Olympos.
The annual festival became especially splendid at the end of the 5th century BC when Archelaos of Macedonia added athletic games and theatrical contests to the sacrificial ceremonies.
Dion was a place visited frequently by the Macedonian kings who came to make sacrifices to Zeus Olympios, for the ceremony of purification of the army, to take oaths of alliance before the gods, and for celebrations with the army and the people. Inscriptions of royal texts were set up in the sanctuary of Zeus. There too stood statues of the kings and the statues of the 25 companions, shown mounted, who fell in the battle of the Granikos, a work by Lysippos. Dion flourished during hellenistic and imperial times. Her last important phase was in the 4th century AD After this, the city declined, while repeated earthquakes threw her buildings into ruin, obliging her inhabitants to abandon their home.
Excavations outside the walls have located the sanctuary of Zeus, where the altar, statue bases and inscriptions have been found, the sanctuary of Demeter with buildings and finds going back to the 6th century BC, and the sanctuary of Isis where originally Artemis as goddess of childbirth was worshipped.
Found within the city walls, which date to the 4th century BC, are roads, many public and private buildings, the agora, bathing establishments, villas, workshops, houses and basilicas. The earliest constructions go back to the 5th century; the more recent to the end of antiquity and early Christian times."