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Thessaloniki : the late archaic temple

• Τασιά, Αναστασία
• Λόλα, Ζωή
• Πελτέκης, Όμηρος

Following the demolition of an old building in the W sector of the historic centre of Thessaloniki, the so-called “area of the temples”, the 16th Directorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities conducted a rescue excavation on the site and uncovered a monumental building measuring 16.80x13.50x8.30 m. It is a peripteral in antis temple of the Roman period with Ionic architectural members and a SE-NW orientation, and was probably repaired in the Early Imperial period. Along the SW side of the temple the crépis of 5 marble steps, part of the stylobate of Archaic marble blocks, and a floor paved with marble slabs survive in excellent condition. The marble Ionic base of a column on a square plinth 1 m in diameter survives in situ on the stylobate. (Both the stylobate and the Ionic base are in the area which surrounded the building, into which the investigations had to extend.) Part of the SW side and the entire NW end of the temple are under the pavement along Karaoli - Dimitriou Street and around Andigonidon Square. Owing to the proximity of the adjoining buildings, excavation of the SE end (the facade) and the NE side was fragmentary and limited to uncovering individual architectural features of the temple (parts of the stylobate and of one step of the crepidoma). The fact that there is no trace of the floor or of any marble architectural feature in the centre of the site indicates how much damage was done to the temple when the recently demolished building was erected. The extent of the damage is also apparent from the 100 and more marble fragments from the temple’s architectural decoration, which were found built into the buttress walls in the basement of the old building.The temple’s bedrock foundations were located under the staircase on the side of the temple at a depth of 7 m.Lastly, the excavations yielded 2 statues: i) a more than life-size headless statue of Zeus Aigiochos, dated to Hadrian’s reign; ii) the marble torso of an emperor wearing a breastplate, of the early 1st century AD. It is worth mentioning that many of the members of this Late Roman temple were found in the 1930s in the immediate vicinity of the current excavation site and are on display at the entrance to the Sculpture Exhibition in the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum. The base of the temple and with part of the stylobate were hastily buried under the buildings erected at that time and their precise location was not documented. The discovery, some 70 years later, of the disputed site of the temple is of considerable importance for the city of Thessaloniki, because it has a bearing on recent research regarding the site of ancient Therme, which is believed to be either in the wider area of Thessaloniki or underneath Thessaloniki itself. All this depending, of course, on whether the Archaic temple is in its original place or was transferred here from extramural Thessaloniki.The excavational data so far indicate with considerable certainty that we are digging on the original site of the temple (though the investigations have to continue, of course, so that we can collect further data). It seems highly unlikely that the temple was transferred here, because its architectural form has not been changed; and it is also considered doubtful that spolia were selectively brought here from a ruined temple in the wider area, because organising such a costly proceedure just for the architectural features of the superstructure would have been uneconomical for the city, and, above all, because it seems more logical to look for these features in the close environment of the excavation, since we are in an area of temples.This personal opinion of ours is supported by two excavational findings: evidence of the existence of an earlier poros building located in a small exploratory trench in the wing of the temple; and part of the superstructure of the entablature of a small Archaic building found built into the foundation of the wing.

• History and Archaeology

• Αρχαιολογία

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