OLYMPICS / ATHENS 2004 Opening Ceremony of the XXVIII Olympiad   The Olympic Torch Relay takes place before the big celebration of the Olympic Games, while the Olympic flame is the primary symbol of the Olympic ideal, noble competition, friendship and peaceful coexistence. The objective of the ATHENS 2004 Torch Relay was to give to the Olympic flame the possibility to light the universal values of Olympism and to touch people’s hearts. The entire world got to know Greece by uniting the municipalities with sports and culture. On 13 August, the Flame reached it’s final destination, the Athens Olympic Stadium for the Opening Ceremony of the ATHENS 2004 Olympic Games.     On 13 August, the biggest celebration of the world began at the Athens Olympic Stadium. Exactly at 20:45, the Opening Ceremony signalled the start of the ATHENS 2004 Olympic Games.  Approximately 72,000 people inside the Olympic Stadium and four billion more across the globe watched the moment the Games returned to the country where they were born and the city where they were revived. The spectators inside the Olympic Stadium watched a live pre-show, hosted by the well known journalist and broadcaster Nikos Aliagas and “High-Priestess” Thalia Prokopiou, who lit the Olympic Torch during the Lighting Ceremony in Ancient Olympia.  Connecting symbolically the Ancient Olympia Stadium with the Athens Olympic Stadium, the beginning of the Opening Ceremony bridged 3,000 years of Olympic Games history.             The Central arena was filled with 21,62000 litres of water which took six hours to fill but with a facility to drain out in just three minutes made it unique ceremony which lasted for six hours.     Four-hundred percussionists entered the stadium playing to the rhythm of the Greek dance “zeimbeiko”. A giant screen displayed the ancient stadium at Olympia and then a percussionist on the screen and in the stadium played in resonance and struck a rhythm to symbolise heart beat.     A spectacular fire ball plunged into the water filled center field lighting up the Olympic circles which appeared flaming through the water as the percussionists played the rhythm of the heartbeat.  The five-ringed symbol represents the union of the five continents and the meeting of athletes from throughout the world at the Olympic Games.                          ATHENS 2004 President, Ms Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the IOC President, Dr. Jaques Rogge, and the President of the Hellenic Republic, Mr. Konstantinos Stefanopoulos, then entered the Stadium, and the Greek flag was raised and the National Anthem was sung.               The program allegory was breathtaking, depicting the evolution of the Greek civilization which projected the different dimensions of life, including sporting activities. One of the central pieces of the show was a huge 17.3-meter-high replica of the head of a Cycladic head (2,700 BC.) slowly emerging from the center of the pond which covered the stadium floor. As this prehistoric era statue rose above the stadium, it disintegrated slowly, revealing first the Kouros statue of the Archaic era, before this too disintegrated to reveal the relaxed and realistic statue of a young man in the style we now know as Classical, which represents the Classical age of Athens in the fifth century BC and which is best expressed by the Acropolis and its temples.                                                 Musicians, dancers and cast members romped through the ankle-high water. The Cycladic head launched a melodic trip through Grecian history, starting from the Minoan age to the present day, paying tribute to its master philosophers, mathematicians and a glimpse into its future.                     Continue the Journey               Greece  Cafe    Wishes to thank the Athens 2004 Committee and all the talented photographers and journalists who captured the pride and spirit of the Games for information and images posted and linked to this site