THESSALONIKI ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM

This rich museum (Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο Θεσσαλονίκης/Archaiologiko Mousio Thessalonikis) brings together some of Macedonia's major discoveries, from Prehistory to Antiquity. It is designed like an ancient villa, around an atrium (temporary exhibitions) and with a sculpture garden. In front of the entrance, the two sculpted marble sarcophagi from the ^3rd century are among the most imposing in the Roman world. Prehistory is relegated to the basement with the molding of the skull of "Petralona Man", a Homo heidelbergensis who lived 150,000-250,000 years ago in the Petralona cave near Polygyros. The same cave has also yielded bronze axes and artefacts dating back to 3,000 B.C. Return to the ticket office to witness the "birth of cities" in the Iron Age, with a superb jug with spout (c. 900 B.C.) and a funerary vase decorated with a hunting scene (c. 750 B.C.). Antiquity begins with the Kingdom of Macedonia: bronze vases, a helmet with the face of the deceased covered in gold, a stele depicting Hephaestion, general and lover of Alexander the Great, funeral beds from Potidea, a crater decorated with the scene of Heracles killing the boar of Calydon, an elegant head of the god Asclepius... The most imposing piece here is the 6.5 m-high marble door from a tomb of Anthemonte (^4th century BC). J.-C.).

Macedonian gold : grandiose! Also of note is an aulos, a double bone flute from the ^4th century BC, and a stone engraved around 35 BC with notes for singing the text. The next part is devoted to Thessalonica, from its foundation (315 BC) to the Roman period: mosaics, glass flasks, rich funerary objects and sculptures: Emperor Augustus, Atlas all muscle, a handsome young man's head (sometimes identified as Alexander's) and Greco-Oriental divinities that appeared after Alexander's conquests. But it's the section on "Macedonian gold" that's the most grandiose: it features the world's largest collection of gold-leaf funeral crowns and diadems from Macedonia (^6th-2nd centuries BC). Two finds from the necropolis of Lété (10 km north of Thessalonica) dating from the ^4th century BC are also on display here: the magnificent Derveni crater, a large copper and tin vase imitating gold and with rich mouldings, and the 266 fragments of the Derveni papyrus, considered to be the oldest European book.