Temple of Hera at Olympia belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 600 BCE at Olympia, Greece. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
One of the oldest surviving Doric temples, originally wood, then stone, still the stage for the modern Olympic flame lighting.
How it was made
Different column styles record a centuries-long replacement of wooden shafts. Hera received the site before Zeus’s bigger house.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
It is a wonder of time-lapse architecture: you can see Greece inventing the orders.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 600 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 63 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.