Oxylus and his Aetolian followers appear to have settled on the height which later formed Elis's acropolis as the spot best adapted for ruling the country.

By the mid-19th century, however, nothing of it remained except some masses of tile and mortar, several wrought blocks of stone and fragments of sculpture, and a square building about 20 feet (6.1 m) on the outside, which within is in the form of an octagon with niches.

The gymnasium had two principal entrances, one leading by the street called Siope or Silence to the baths, and the other above the cenotaph of Achilles to the agora and the Hellanodicaeum.

Towards one end of this stoa to the left was the Hellanodicaeum, a building divided from the agora by a street, which was the official residence of the Hellanodicae, who received here instruction in their duties for ten months preceding the festival.

It consisted of two rows of Doric columns, with a partition wall running between them: one side was open to the agora, and the other to a temple of Aphrodite Urania, in which was a statue of the goddess in gold and ivory by Pheidias.

The theatre must have been on the slope of the acropolis: it is described by Pausanias as lying between the agora and the Menius, which, if the name is not corrupt, must be the brook flowing down from the heights behind the old town.

On the summit of the acropolis are the remains of a castle, in the walls of which Ernst Curtius noticed, when he visited in the 19th century, some fragments of Doric columns which probably belonged to the temple of Athena.

[10] The acropolis of Elis is now called Kalokaspoi in Greek and the Venetians, who occupied the area in the Middle Ages, transformed this name into Belvedere.