Greece’s Aigai, place of Alexander’s coronation, is set to open

Saturday, January 6, 2024

The marvellous palace of Aigai in Greece, which is luminous in its entirety and witnessed the coronation of Alexander the Great, will open its door to visitors. 

History remembers Alexander the Great as one of the greatest military strategists and leaders. However, little does one know about the magnanimous marvel of the edifice of Aigai. 

This palace will stand erect, embodying the kernel of classical antiquity.

The palace of Aigai (pronounced as Ae-g-ae) had stood witness to Alexander the Great’s rise to power before even beginning his first conquest of the Achaemenid Persian Empire. 

This is followed by a 16-year restoration that incurred more than 20 million euros and amounts to $22 million. It received funding from the European Union.  

Alexander’s father, Phillip II, was instrumental in constructing the palace more than 2,300 years ago. He had thrust the kingdom of Macedonia to the forefront of Greek military affairs. Its royal capital was Aigai.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told the media that these years of arduous labour had finally made the palace ready for exhibiting. The palace’s floors were festooned with mosaic-patterned marble and intricately patterned tiles, and it had column-rimmed courtyards, courts, places of worship, and spacious banquet halls. 

The ground area of the building stretched across 15,000 sq. metres, a little beneath the area encompassed by the U.S. Capitol building.

The palace, which consists of two adjacent squares of different dimensions, functioned as the administrative and mystical centre of the kingdom. The neighbouring royal tombs and the remnants of the palace are classified as a United Nations World Heritage Site, and they are close to the modern village of Vergina. 

Whereas the restoration of the marble columns happened by joining the replica replacement parts with pieces of stone that were found in the ruins, this is much like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.

Nestled in northern Greece, about sixty-five kilometers (40 miles) southwest of the port city of Thessaloniki, Aigai gained international recognition in the late 1970s as a result of burial mound excavations conducted in the region of undulating green hills dotted with daffodil and wild poppies patches. 

[Source Image: Daily Sabah]

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