Sunday 12th May 2024 – Vourvourou, Greece

We said goodbye to Edessa and headed for Pella, birthplace of Alexander the Great. On the edge of the modern village is a Macedonian tomb found in the cemetery area of the ancient city. It is only open to the public on a Sunday, so we had to take the opportunity to visit it. Judging by the surprised reaction of the guardian, we were the first (and probably the only) visitors of the day. The steps lead down to the door and then into the body of the tomb where we were greeted by an unusual arrangement of three rooms on both sides and a painted room at the far end.
We moved on to the relatively new museum which involved driving through the village and it was obvious that you were expected to visit the museum before the site as there were no signs to the site. We tend to associate mosaics with the Romans and it is true that they perfected the art but they got the idea from the Greeks. Pella is famous for its pebble mosaics, which are quite beautiful and date to the 4^th century BC, well before the Romans. The museum had a number of original mosaics taken from the site but also, something that we haven’t seen before, they had full scale photographic reproductions made out of thick plastic and laid on the floor. This was very effective and allowed visitors to get a really good look at the mosaic, which isn’t possible when viewing the originals that are still on the site.
Another example of a technique adopted from the Greeks by the Romans is the painted wall plaster decoration of houses. The museum had an example of a painted wall in the so-called ‘Pompeii style’ but dating to the 3^rd century BC.
An unexpected and very interesting part of the museum was that devoted to finds from the Archaic Period and burials dating from 700 BC to 400 BC. They obviously had access to large amounts of gold as the women’s graves displayed lots of gold jewellery and the men’s graves also contained gold objects, especially gold funereal masks worn under their helmets.
We drove back through the village to the archaeological site and spent some time wandering over the site, seeing the in-situ, very dusty, mosaics and the huge agora (market place). What we didn’t see was any evidence of the port. In antiquity Pella was a very important port but we saw no evidence of it as it hasn’t been excavated. It seems strange to think of it as a port as it is now over 20 km inland, the port having been silted up by river deposits.
There are no campsites in this area so we drove on to Halkidiki and the middle prong, Sithonia. We chose Camping Rea from the ACSI book and settled in for two days of relaxation with a view of the sea from our pitch and the mountain of Athos on Mount Athos lurking in the gloom in the distance.

Photos: The painted room of the Macedonian tomb; Greek pebble mosaic dated to 325 – 300 BC showing Dionysos on a panther (original); The painted wall from the 3^rd century BC; Terracotta figures of Hercules and Aphrodite from the agora (market place); One of the Archaic warrior burials complete with his weapons and personal possessions; A particularly woman’s burial complete with a gold death mask; A view across the huge agora of Pella with workshops and shops on the left and the administration centre for the agora on the right (covered).