Until now, very
little could be seen of the excavations carried out inside the walls of the Royal
Palace in Pella.
The Palace
occupied a strategic hillside, north of the city of Pella.
It offered a sweeping view over the surrounding farmland, the port, the lagoon,
and the two access roads from the city’s Agora. So far, seven major buildings
have been identified, spread over a series of stepped terraces.
In August 2022,
I shared the news that the Palace had been opened to visitors (see: Welcome
to the Royal Palace of Pella), but that turned out to be a dead-end
lead because the site really opened to the public in the first days of January
2026. The reason for this delay is not given. The billboard on the site, as
included in my earlier blog, is still there, unchanged. What happened on the
ground remains an open question.
Reconstructed sections of the Palace of Pella. Credit: Greek Ministry of Culture
The outline of
the seven Buildings today appears to be marked with white pebbles in those
places where even the remaining stones are problematic. The
identification of the rooms has not progressed beyond the Andron (Building I),
to the right of the Propylon entrance, and the Palaestra (Building V) and its swimming
pool west of the Royal Residence. The other buildings are tentatively linked to
certain functions, but without conviction. After all, the army officers and
Royal Pages needed a place to stay, as suggested in Building V. Where to locate
the Palace’s kitchen? Buildings VII and III have been tentatively dedicated to
workshops or storage areas.
Andron, the main hall in the northern part of Building I, is destined to host the royal banquets. Aerial view before restoration.
I still can’t
get over the emptiness of the Palace, where close to nothing is left to show
its grandeur, except its size that spreads further than what has been brought
to light so far. The complex not only represented power and living quarters,
but also functioned as a center of administration and military planning.
How come the
city of Pella
proper has so many more signs of prosperity and wealth to show than the Royal Palace?
The Romans thoroughly looted the Palace in 168 BC, and an earthquake in the 1st
century AD seriously damaged the structure. In later centuries, the locals
helped themselves to the readily available stones for their own constructions, leaving mere crumbs.
On the occasion of this opening, two Hellenistic statues discovered in 2015 in the Agora of Pella are being displayed at the Archaeological Museum of Pella. One statue is that of a woman, the other has been identified as Silenus, a mythological figure related to Dionysus.
Apparently, no
statues have been unearthed in or around the Royal Palace,
but no statuettes, vessels, shards of pottery, or bits of jewelry are mentioned either …
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