The promise was specific and the failure was public. Engineers had argued the cover would protect everyone from the scorching summer heat, which was worse at this complex because of its western, sun-exposed siting. But the Games' budget was inflating and other, more urgent works kept jumping the queue. So the planned roof slipped to later, and later never arrived. The swimming federation, faced with a complex that would not meet its sheltered-venue standards, approved the open-air pools anyway. The fix was improvised: temporary bleachers, taller than the permanent stands, were erected to reach the required capacity, and they happened to throw shade across the water and parts of the grounds, though not over the spectators baking in their seats. The athletes competed; the sun won.

The centre is older than its Olympic fame. It was built in Marousi, in the northern suburbs of Athens, for the 1991 Mediterranean Games, then refurbished and expanded when the city won the 2004 Summer Olympics and Paralympics. By the time the Games arrived it held two outdoor pools and one indoor pool. The larger outdoor pool, seating around 11,500, hosted the marquee swimming and water polo events; the smaller one staged synchronized swimming; the indoor pool took diving and additional water polo, and during the Paralympics, the swimming. For a few weeks it was one of the most-watched bodies of water on Earth, the backdrop to records and heartbreaks broadcast to billions.

Then the crowds went home, and the harder question arrived: what does a city do with an Olympic pool after the Olympics? Athens did not have a ready answer. There was no real legacy plan for the venue; the existing masterplan dated to 1985, and the next would not come until 2014, a long gap in which the opportunity to make the most of the site largely slipped away. The story is not unusual. Olympic venues around the world have struggled to find a second life worthy of their cost. Athens at least kept the water moving. Since 2005, the outdoor pools have hosted swimming programs from late spring into early winter, retreating indoors for the coldest months.

Stand at the complex today and the most striking thing is what is not there. The two outdoor pools remain wide open to the sky, exactly as they were on the day the Games closed, the missing roof now a permanent feature rather than a temporary compromise. There is something fitting about it, even accidental poetry. Athens gave the world the original Olympics and the marble theatres where audiences sat under open heavens. When its modern Games came, the swimmers too looked up and saw nothing but blue. The roof was a broken promise. The view, at least, was the genuine article.