Olympic flame lit for London Games Actress Ino Menegaki, acting as high priestess, holds the Olympic torch in a rehearsal for the lighting...

Olympic flame lit for London Games

Actress Ino Menegaki, acting as high priestess, holds the Olympic torch in a rehearsal for the lighting ceremony. The Olympic flame was lit in Ancient Olympia in Greece on Thursday. AFP

Actress Ino Menegaki, playing high priestess, reheases the lighting of the Olympics torch. The Olympic flame was lit in Ancient Olympia in Greece on Thursday.AFP

Greek actress Ino Menegaki, playing the role of High Priestess, lights a torch from the sun's rays reflected in a parabolic mirror during the torch lighting ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games.Reuters

Greek actress Ino Menegaki (C), playing the role of High Priestess, lights the torch held by Spyridon Gianniotis (R), Greece's world champion of swimming, during the torch lighting ceremony of the London Games.Reuters

The Olympic flame was lit in Ancient Olympia in Greece on Thursday, in a solemn ceremony filled with mystery and tradition that signals the final countdown to the start of this year's summer Games in London.

Actors in ancient Greek costume invoked the god Apollo in the ruins of the 2,600-year-old Temple of Hera, using a concave mirror to harness the sun's rays and kindle a flame on the torch for a relay that will take it around Greece and Britain.

Dignitaries at the ceremony included the president of the International Olympic Committee Jacques Rogge, as well as the head of the London organising committee, Sebastian Coe.

"We promise to protect the flame, to cherish its traditions and stage an uplifting torch relay of which we can be proud," Coe said in a speech, vowing the event would "lift the spirits and hopes of people across Britain and across the world".

The ceremony marks the start of a week-long torch relay, which will take it to five major Greek archaeological sites, including the Acropolis, before it arrives at the old Olympic stadium in Athens, site of the first modern Games in 1896.

A British delegation will receive the flame at a night-time ceremony on May 17.

The London Olympic Games torch will tour the United Kingdom and also visit the Republic of Ireland before it arrives at the Olympic Stadium in east London on July 27 to a worldwide television audience of billions.

The torch's route in Britain starts on May 19 at Land's End, the southernmost tip of England to begin an 8,000-mile (12,875-kilometre) journey.

From June 3-7, it will visit Northern Ireland and then the Republic of Ireland -- the only country outside the United Kingdom on the torch route.

(Agencies)