The Zappeion Hall looks like it was built for something important, and it was.

Commissioned in 1874 and completed fourteen years later, it was the first building in the world constructed specifically for the revival of the Olympic Games. When Athens hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896, athletes competed here in fencing. The architect, Theophil Hansen, also designed the Austrian Parliament in Vienna, and the family resemblance is hard to miss.

The building takes its name from Evangelos Zappas, an Epirote businessman and patriot whose statues flank the entrance alongside those of his cousin Konstantinos, who carried out Evangelos's vision after his death. Since then, the Zappeion has hosted a Picasso exhibition, Greece's signing of its accession to the European Community in 1979, and the press centre for the 2004 Athens Olympics.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tours place the Zappeion in the story of modern Greece's ambitions, tracing how two cousins and a Danish architect gave the newly independent nation one of its most enduring landmarks.