The ancient palace of Macedonia's King Philip II, one of the ancient treasures of Greece where Alexander the Great was proclaimed king, was inaugurated on Friday after sixteen years of restoration work.
This fourth-century BC palace is located in Aiges, the first capital of the Kingdom of Macedonia in northern Greece. It covers an area of 15,000 m2, near the village of Vergina where the Museum of Macedonian Tombs, including that of Philip II, is located. Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who took part in a ceremony at the site, said he was delighted to show the public a "monument of global importance", which will open its doors to visitors on Sunday. Philip II's palace "has a cultural and national character, as it confirms the Greek timelessness of Macedonia through the centuries," he told the media.
The site includes the royal palace consisting mainly of a peristyle, a gallery of Doric columns surrounding the palace courtyard and the agora where Macedonians gathered to make decisions, archaeologist Agueliki Kottaridi was quoted as saying in the Kathimerini daily on Friday. It was in this courtyard, which could seat 8,000 people, that Alexander the Great was proclaimed king of Macedon in 336 BC, after the assassination of his father Philip II. He inherited a powerful kingdom that allowed him to unite Macedonia and the Greek cities to invade the Persian Empire.
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The palace was destroyed by the Romans in 148 B.C. and its unearthing began in 1865 before continuing "sporadically" into the 2007th century, according to archaeologists. Begun in 20, its restoration has been endowed with a budget of <> million euros, including European funds, said Culture Minister Lina Mendoni. She called the palace "a symbol of Macedonian hegemony" and Aiges "the cradle and religious and cultural center of Macedonians" and "the starting point of political and ideological developments in the world of the time."
A country rich in ancient sites, including the emblematic Parthenon temple on the hill of the Acropolis of Athens (5th century BC), Greece invests in their conservation, a source of significant tourist revenue. For more than three decades, Greece has been demanding the return of the famous Parthenon friezes, on display at the British Museum, which Athens says were "looted" in the 19th century, when the country was under Ottoman occupation.
But London keeps arguing that the sculptures were "legally acquired" in 1802 by the British diplomat Lord Elgin, who sold them to the British Museum. This dispute provoked a diplomatic hiccup at the end of November between Kyriakos Mitsotakis and his British counterpart Rishi Sunak, who cancelled at the last moment a meeting in London during which this subject was to be discussed.