GREECE MACEDONIA EMATHIA VERGINA PALACE

From the large parking lot in Vergina an asphalt road and then a stone path leads uphill to the palace of Aigai. It is a footwalk of half an hour (only vehicles of employees allowed), but it is worth every effort. After nearly five decades of excavation and 16 years of painstaking restoration, visitors can now (2025) finally enter the imposing palace - free of charge.

The monumental palace was built around 340 BC during the reign of Philip II (although he had another palace at Pella) and was the biggest and one of the most impressive buildings of classical Greece. Three times larger than the Parthenon, it is arranged around an open column-fringed courtyard, which alone could hold 4,000 people. And it is here where the 20-year-old Alexander the Great was crowned in 336 BC. The buildings around this square peristyle had painted plastered walls and fine relief tiles, while the masonry and architectural members were covered with lustrous high-quality marble stucco. With its monumentality and luxurious decoration it became an archetype of palaces in the Hellenistic world. It is often compared and mentioned next to the Parthenon - but honestly, nothing compares to the masterpiece of Classical architecture in Athens.

In 148 BC, the Roman legions of Metellus defeated Philip VI in Pydna and marched on to Agai. The royal metropolis of the Macedonians was punished in an exemplary manner. The defensive walls were demolished, the city was pillaged and the palace, symbol of Macedonian rule, was plundered, set on fire and razed to the ground - condemned to damnatio memoriae.