Olympian Gods: Birthplaces from Crete to Olympus

In Apollodorus's version, Zeus's mother Rhea gave birth to him in a cave on Mount Dikte, where two nymphs raised him on the milk of the goat Amalthea. Hesiod names a cave on a different mountain, Aegaeon, and scholars still argue about where Dikte was. Two of the site's excavators, Arthur Evans and David George Hogarth, identified it with Psychro Cave on the Lasithi Plateau. Excavators found a stuccoed altar in the upper cave in 1900, surrounded by ashes and the bones of bulls, sheep, goats, deer and a boar. The finds are now in the Heraklion Museum, the Ashmolean, the Louvre and the British Museum.

Location precision: Ancient authors disagree on where Zeus was raised, and modern scholars dispute whether Psychro is Dikte at all.

Crete is not the only claimant. Mount Lykaion was sacred to Zeus Lykaios, who was said to have been born and raised here. His altar is a great mound of ashes held by a retaining wall. Tradition held that no shadows fell inside the precinct. Lower down the slope, athletic games called the Lykaia were held every four years in his honour. Since 2004 a joint University of Pennsylvania and University of Arizona project has excavated and surveyed the site.

Location precision: Lykaion is one of several rival birthplaces for Zeus, and the pin marks the mountain rather than a single spot.

Leto, shunned by Zeus's jealous wife Hera, gave birth to the twins Apollo and Artemis on the island of Delos. By the time of the Odyssey it was already famous for it. Cynthus is the island's high point, a bare granite rock only 113 metres tall, topped by a sanctuary of Zeus. Down on the flat, the people of Naxos dedicated the Terrace of the Lions to Apollo shortly before 600 BC.

Location precision: The myth names only the island of Delos; the pin marks Mount Cynthus, its high point.

After his birth on Delos, Apollo went looking for a place for an oracle, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, and chose Delphi on Mount Parnassus. There he killed the serpent that guarded the spring. His priestesses, the Pythia, then served as the oracle in the temple. Pilgrims climbed the Sacred Way, lined with treasuries, to reach the temple.

Visitor guidance: The temple stands within the Panhellenic Sanctuary at Delphi on Mount Parnassus.

Olympus was the home of the Twelve Olympian gods. Homer treats it as the seat of the gods without naming a peak, and Herodotus is the one who identifies it with the mountain in Thessaly. At its northern foot, tradition placed the nine Muses. The summit ridge has a peak called Stefani, also known as Thronos Dios, the Throne of Zeus.

Location precision: Homer never ties the gods' seat to one summit, so the pin marks the Thessalian massif as a whole.