Published January 3, 2024
8 min read
You’ve probably heard of Alexander the Great, the king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon in the fourth century B.C. Known for conquering lands as far away as India, and taking steps toward creating the world’s first multicultural empire, he was a legend even before his death at 32. But until recently, there were few historic places travelers could visit to learn about his life.
Now, the ancient city where Alexander was crowned is being brought to light in northern Greece. The Polycentric Museum of Aigai, opened in late 2022, is bringing back the original capital of ancient Macedonia, an hour’s drive west of Thessaloníki. (Greek Macedonia, which joined the country in 1913, includes the separate country of North Macedonia, bordering Greece.)
While the Macedonians had moved their capital to Pella, about 30 miles northeast, by the time Alexander was born, the older city of Aigai (near present-day Vergina) remained the center of political and religious life. It’s where Philip II of Macedon—Alexander’s father—was famously assassinated in 336 B.C. Alexander was hastily crowned in the palace afterward, and Philip was buried nearby.
Aigai was lost for around 2,000 years until 1997, when Philip’s tomb was discovered by archaeologist Manolis Andronikos. Open to the public since 1997, the Royal Tombs are part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with a subterranean museum in the tumulus (ancient burial mound) containing four royal graves, including Philip’s.
Visitors can walk between the tombs in the darkness and marvel at the door of Philip’s grave—adorned with a 2,360-year-old fresco depicting the king and Alexander hunting. Nearby, burial artifacts are on display, including ivory couches, rich textiles that once wrapped bones, and delicate golden wreaths and ossuaries. There’s even a set of Philip’s gleaming armor.
Alexander’s burial site has never been found—its location is one of the greatest mysteries of the ancient world. But the Royal Tombs offer a compelling glimpse of ancient Macedonian aristocracy, a contrast to the new adjacent museum which explores everyday life in the kingdom.
(New clues surface about where Alexander the Great’s tomb might be.)
A museum for regular people, not just royals
The sites of Aigai are overseen by Angeliki Kottaridi, director of the Imathia Ephorate of Antiquities. She always wanted to tell the story of the commoners of the city, too. The new Central Museum Building does just that, transforming the remains of Aigai into a vast, “scattered” (or polycentric) site. In contrast to the low-lit Royal Tombs, the new showplace is made of gleaming white stone and flooded with natural light.
“I wanted this to have a different concept,” says Kottaridi, explaining the distinction between the two museums. “White is the light from beyond—so this is a place from beyond, where [the dead] can share their stories.”
(Adventure along ancient Greece’s legendary river to the underworld.)
The new museum begins in an atrium displaying part of the columned peristyle of Aigai’s Royal Palace—a vast building whose double colonnade, Kottaridi says, inspired architecture from Athens to Asia—and then shows sculptures from the ancient city, including a formidable, stern-faced statue of Eurydice, Alexander’s grandmother.
Giving life to the ‘worthless’
The museum’s main hall further illustrates the lives of ordinary citizens by displaying very ordinary things—lamps, keys, pots, figurines, and simple iron nails—in backlit cases, like works of art.
“For the first time, there’s no taboo about exhibiting ‘worthless’ items,” says tour guide Athina Tsakiri, who has been bringing visitors to the site since it opened. “This is cheap stuff that usually nobody pays attention to.”
“In other museums, you have just masterpieces; here we have normal things, the reality of life,” adds Kottaridi.
(Learn about Alexander the Great’s powerful warrior mother.)
One case contains nothing but terracotta tile shards—clearly disturbed while wet—with a human handprint and the claw and paw prints of dogs, cats, and roosters.
Another area showcases the domestic lives of women, with cases of jewelry, hairpins, makeup pots, and a loom reconstructed on a plastic frame, slung with dozens of terracotta weights.
A case of hand-turned iron keys stands as evidence of past lives. “The houses aren’t with us, but the key is the idea of the house,” says Kottaridi.
The final gallery of the small museum showcases relics from cremations of Philip and Alexander’s ancestors from 580-300 B.C. Back then, royals (initially, only the men) were cremated on funeral pyres with house-like structures built on top of them. Potshards, nails, and even half-melted door-knockers are all piled together, left as they would have been after a cremation. Jewelry placed on the bodies of nine Macedonian queens has been reconstructed in life-size cases, including that of the fifth-century-B.C. “Lady of Aigai,” whose body, dressed in gold, was excavated by Kottaridi in 1988.
For Tsakiri, the museum also helps contextualize the achievements of Philip and Alexander. “It’s special because you can trace the history and the culture of those people from the very beginning,” she says. “Philip didn’t appear out of nowhere—what he did and what his son did had very strong foundations.”
Bringing a city back to life
Many items on display at the new museum come from recent digs within Aigai, and the plan is to rotate exhibits frequently and showcase new finds. Less than a tenth of the city has been excavated so far, says Kottaridi. “We have a lot of work to do.”
The Romans destroyed the Aigai Royal Palace after conquering Macedonia in 168 B.C. This month, after two decades of excavation, its ruins open as the fourth section of the polycentric site (including the two museums and a nearby church).
“We needed a space to show the city. It’s a new idea to approach the whole site as a big museum with units in different geographical spots,” says Kottaridi. “I’m very proud that we’re bringing back the Macedonians.”
Julia Buckley is a Venice, Italy-based travel writer. Follow her on X.
This story was created with assistance from Discover Greece.