Nomination concerning Greece, submitted in 2007, and not recommended for inclusion in the Memory of the World Register.

The score of the Olympic Anthem, which is kept at the National Library of Greece, contains in its nine pages the handwritten text of its composer, Spyrhidon Filiskos-Samaras (1861- 1917), eminent figure of the Greek music scene of international repute, including the lyrics by Kostis Palamas (1859-1943), prominent Greek poet, author and member of the Academy of Athens. Both music and lyrics were specifically composed following an assignment by the Organizing International Olympic Committee of the Games of the Ist Olympiad in Athens in 1896. The proposal was made to the Committee by Dimitrios Vikelas, author, prominent scholar, leading figure and main supporter of the Organizing Committee of the Games of the Ist Olympiad, the Crown Prince Konstantinos.

This Olympic Anthem’s score was first played at the opening ceremony of the Games of the Ist Olympiad, on March 1896 and it was adopted by the International Olympic Committee as its official anthem, at the Tokyo session, in 1958.

The continuous use, over the last 48 years, of the Samaras and Palamas anthem, has contributed to its establishment in the minds of the international public opinion, so much so that during the proceedings of the 1958 Tokyo Conference, which established the Anthem as the official one, it was referred as “fabulous”. The occasional anthems of the 1900-1956 Olympiads have already been forgotten.

The text of the Olympic Anthem, written by K. Palamas, celebrates the human values of peaceful coexistence based on noble competition, beyond nationalistic differences, while it precisely expresses the goal of the Olympic Movement, that is the contribution and the building of a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind, in a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.


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