Helena Smith writes in the Guardian about the Palace of Aigai, the largest surviving classical Greek building, after 16-year reconstruction completed.
For historians inside and outside Greece the new palace does something better still: refocus attention away from the classical age of Pericles in Athens to the Macedonian dynasty of northern Greece and achievements of Philip and Alexander.
“History is always about what we focus on,” said the British historian and broadcaster Michael Wood, speaking from London. “And this focuses our attention on the incredible events that began there. This small, provincial, militaristic kingdom would be the catalyst for the spread of Greek culture and Aigai the launch pad for Alexander the Great’s adventure in history, his expedition to Asia and conquest of half the known world.”
If the Parthenon represented the peak of the classical age, the royal metropolis conjured the beginning of the Hellenistic age, one that would last for hundreds of years and be felt as far as Afghanistan and India.
But there was something else, said Wood, who retraced the young warrior king’s epic journey through deserts, mountain ranges, rivers and plains from Greece to the north-west frontier of Pakistan and India in the 1990s.
The palace’s reconstruction had shown, yet again, that like the Parthenon marbles, great historical monuments have “an integrity” best seen united in their natural landscape. “The modern Greek state, as it should be, is proving to be a pre-eminent guardian of its ancient Greek culture,” said Wood. “What the palace also does is draw attention to the fact that the fifth-century sculptures should all be in the same place, back in Athens.”
Read Helena Smith's article in the Guardian, here.
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