Dion was the sacred city of the ancient Macedonians — their great religious centre, spread across a green, spring-fed plain at the very foot of Mount Olympus, the mountain the Greeks held to be the home of the gods. Named for Zeus (Dios, 'of Zeus'), Dion was where the kings of Macedon came to honour Olympian Zeus and the Muses, offering sacrifices and celebrating festivals in the god's own shadow. Its greatest moment came in 334 BC, when Alexander the Great, before crossing into Asia to overthrow the Persian Empire, held a grand festival of sacrifices and games here, dedicating his campaign to Zeus at the sanctuary that his royal house had honoured for generations.
What survives today is an unusually complete ancient landscape, watered by the springs of Olympus and threaded by streams that keep the site green even in high summer. Within the walled Roman city run paved streets flanked by villas and public buildings, among them the Villa of Dionysus with its celebrated mosaic of the god riding a chariot drawn across the sea. There are Roman baths with fine floor mosaics, a Hellenistic and a Roman theatre, and, ranged beyond the walls, the sanctuaries that made Dion holy: the great sanctuary of Zeus Olympios where the Macedonian kings sacrificed, the ancient sanctuary of Demeter, and the sanctuary of the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose statues were found still standing in the water that floods its foundations.
The finds from more than a century of excavation are gathered in the Archaeological Museum of Dion in the nearby village, included in your ticket — among them the cult statues from the sanctuaries and the famous Dion hydraulis, the oldest surviving pipe organ in the world. Dion lies about 90 km southwest of Thessaloniki and only a short drive from Litochoro, the gateway village to Mount Olympus, which makes it a natural pairing with a day on the mountain. The park is broad and partly shaded by trees and reeds, but the ground is a mix of grass, gravel and paving, so comfortable shoes help. Because entry is timed by the hour, we handle the ticketing in your own language and reserve the slot you want, so you can give your energy to the ruins and the mountain instead of the queue.