Greece reopens 2400-year-old Palace of Aigai, where Alexander the Great was crowned

It was built more than 2,300 years ago during the reign of Alexander’s father, Phillip II, who had transformed the kingdom of Macedonia into a dominant military power of ancient Greece. Aigai was its royal capital.

“After many years of painstaking work, we can reveal the palace. What we are doing today is an event of global importance,” Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at an inauguration event at the site.

The palace contained column-rimmed courtyards, courts, places of worship, and spacious banquet halls, its floors decorated with patterned marble and intricate mosaics. The building covered a ground area of 15,000 square meters, a little under the area covered by the U.S. Capitol building.

Shaped like two adjoining, unequally sized, square donuts, the Palace of Aigai was the administrative and spiritual center of the kingdom. The palace remains and nearby royal tombs are a United Nations World Heritage Site at the area next to the modern village of Vergina. Like a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle, the marble columns were resurrected by fitting pieces of stone unearthed in the ruins together with replica replacement parts.