Sunday, January 15, 2012

Plovdiv, King Philip’s Philippopolis

Hot news in Bulgaria’s newspaper The Sofia Echo of 9 December 2011, is the latest discovery made by road-workers in the centre of Plovdiv, one of the main cities of Bulgaria that was founded by nobody less than King Philip II of Macedonia and which he named after himself – hence Philippopolis.

[picture from the Sofia Echo]

I read that a major part of a fortress wall has been located during work on the heating infrastructure, measuring 50 meters in length and nearly two meters wide, adding an important element to the lay-out of Philip’s city. According to the archaeologists called to the site, this wall dates from the last quarter of the 2nd century AD, so definitely Roman. Other large structures seem to refer to a tower or an entrance building but this cannot be confirmed as the remains disappear under a building on a busy street.

Unfortunately, since the roadwork has to be carried out as planned, the wall will be covered over again in order to complete the job. That is the never-ending story of any city that is built and rebuilt on top of its antiques remains. Exciting stuff though…

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