PALAIS ANTIQUE DU ROI PHILIPPE II

This archaeological site (Ανάκτορο των Αιγών/Anaktoro to Aigon) is impressive: situated beneath the Pierian Mountains, on a hill overlooking Vergina at an altitude of 190 m, it houses the largest ancient palace in Greece, a building three times larger than the Parthenon in Athens, where Alexander the Great was proclaimed King of Macedonia in 336 BCC. Open to the public since 2024, the 12,500^m2 building was constructed during the reign of Philip II of Macedonia. Completed around 350 BC, it was destroyed during the sacking of Aigai by the Romans in 168 BC. Rediscovered by French archaeologist Léon Heuzé in 1855, it took sixteen years to rebuild. Access is by a small road from the main Vergina parking lot, then by a 4 x 4 (or high-clearance vehicle) from the theater site. From there, it's a 10-minute walk. Surrounded by centuries-old oaks and offering a vast panorama over the Imathia plain and the Aliakmon valley, the site is very beautiful with its twenty or so raised Doric columns, some reaching 7.62 m in height.

Peristyle and mosaics. Praised by Plato in The Timaeus (c. 358 BC) for its grandeur and balanced proportions, the main building is 104.50 m long and 88.50 m wide. It frames a 2,000^m2 peristyle: a large square courtyard surrounded by a colonnaded gallery. This served several places of worship and some fifteen banqueting halls, two of which have preserved their splendid mosaic pavements. The second floor of the peristyle is reconstructed in the atrium of the Aigai Museum. The palace's function seems to have been primarily official: it served as a place for pageantry and receptions. And it was in the new Macedonian capital, Pella (57 km to the northeast), that the royal family resided. A symbol of the power exercised over Thrace and Greece after Philip II's conquests, the palace may well have been designed by the great Greek architect Pytheos of Priene, whose work includes the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, now in Turkey, which was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. In any case, the layout of the Aigai palace follows the rule of the "golden ratio": a geometric concept born in ancient Greece after the work of Pythagoras (c. 580-495 BC) and establishing a proportion deemed harmoniously ideal with a ratio between numbers equal to approximately 1.618. An explanatory panel with diagram describes this in the center of the peristyle.