New Thessaloniki Museum Showcases 300,000 Metro Excavation Finds

Thessaloniki metro. Credit: Greek Reporter

A caller depository successful Thessaloniki has opened, placing thousands of artefacts from metro excavation enactment connected nationalist show for the archetypal time.

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis inaugurated the Thessalonikeon Mitropolis depository connected Saturday. It opened to the nationalist the pursuing day.

The depository occupies the restored A3 subject barracks astatine Pavlos Melas Metropolitan Park. The two-storey gathering spans astir 3,000 quadrate metres (32,292 sq ft). The tract was erstwhile a subject basal successful the city’s occidental districts, and Greece’s Culture Ministry oversaw the reconstruction.

The postulation is drawn from metro excavation sites crossed the city, according to civilization and antiquities officials. It spans much than 2,000 years, from Thessaloniki’s founding successful 316/315 BC to the Great Fire of 1917.

Thessaloniki depository brings metro excavation layers into nationalist view

The crushed level covers areas erstwhile extracurricular the past metropolis walls. Stations covered see New Railway Station, Dimokratias, Sintrivani, Panepistimio, Fleming, and the Pylaia depot. Finds from those sites constituent to cemeteries, workshops, inns, and retention facilities. Early Christian buildings were recovered arsenic well, on with traces of a pre-Thessaloniki settlement.

Notable pieces see golden wreaths, funerary stelae, jewellery, larnakes, and decorated sarcophagi dating to the Greek and Roman eras. Frescoes and mosaics from an aboriginal Byzantine basilica are besides connected display.

Greece's latest Thessaloniki depository turns years of metro excavation into a nationalist travel done the city's past past, from 316 BC to 1917. pic.twitter.com/6QxiwM5aPa

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The precocious level covers discoveries from wrong the past walls, chiefly from the Venizelou and Agia Sofia stations. Exhibits are arranged on a cardinal roadworthy axis, evoking the city’s humanities main thoroughfare and the metro enactment moving beneath it.

Outside, visitors tin presumption restored mosaic floors and past hypocaust systems. A Late Antiquity villa unearthed adjacent Agia Sofia presumption betwixt 2017 and 2018 stands beneath a solid enclosure. A brace of marble sarcophagi from Dimokratias presumption stands successful the courtyard.

Mitsotakis touts taste hub for long-overlooked occidental districts

Mitsotakis said the task creates a taste and recreational hub successful occidental Thessaloniki. He added that it brings attraction to areas agelong neglected by the cardinal government.

The Thessaloniki depository is unfastened from 08:30 to 15:30 and closed connected Tuesdays. Its intent is conservation and nationalist education. The task received 14.5 cardinal euros ($16.9 million) from Greece’s Recovery Fund.

Plans telephone for 2 further museums astatine the aforesaid tract covering exile Hellenism and the Greek absorption movement. Local authorities accidental the task aims to marque occidental Thessaloniki a large taste destination.