At the historic crossroads Thessalonikiat the crossroads Venizelos and Egnatiasthe last act of a gigantic operation to remove, recover and relocate the antiquities of one of the most important finds metro which revealed the construction of the project.

dissected Decumanus Maximus Avenue and an important building complex of the urban fabric of late antiquity has returned to move, exactly where they were located about ten years ago at the Venizelos metro station. The antiquities return to the “spore” station about a year after their dismemberment, “undercutting” then any hope of a large part of the scientific world and many Thessalonians that the antiquities would remain immovable and be preserved by the country in the place where they remained intact by 4 century.

Unlike the return of the cistern to the Hagia Sophia station, where cranes lowered the massive sections of the ancient building in four days, the return of the shattered road to the largest metro construction site is a laborious process, which nevertheless closes the chapter “ancient and metro”.

Antiques, most of which are packed, have been gradually moving from Kalohori to Venizelou since last Thursday. The cranes lower the building, remaining six meters below the surface of the current road, to simultaneously begin repositioning exactly where they were disconnected. According to available information, the first antiquities to be transported were pieces of the wall of the building. The rest follow gradually, section by section, until the impressive monumental island is completely assembled.

The antiquities, most of which are packaged, are being gradually transferred from Kalochori to Venizelou – cranes lower the building, which remains six meters below the surface of the current road.

All archaeological treasures of about 1300 sqm will be transported to Venizelos station. Described by historians as “Byzantine Pompeii”, it consists of a set of documents testifying to the continuity of urban life in the center of Thessaloniki. It preserves the central street of late Roman/early Byzantine Thessaloniki in its entire width (Decumanus Maximus) from 4.5 to 7 meters, covered with marble and stone slabs. It also retains its intersection with a vertical street (cardo), a quadrangle from which 12 pesos were saved at the junction of two streets and is reported to be reinstalled in May, a marble-paved square, later the shops of the city’s Byzantine market, as well as a 4th-century bathhouse.

delivery date

The goal is to complete the work on returning the temporarily torn off finds and raising them to the -1 mark before the end of the year, so that the archaeological site will be ready simultaneously with the commissioning of the railway station – New Switzerland highway. , which will allow the launch of the metro in January 2024, Attico Metro president Nikos Tahiaos told K. Is it likely that the upcoming elections will affect the project and the final date of delivery? “The planning of Attiko Metro cannot take into account such cases,” Mr. Takhiaos replies categorically. “The company, like the contractor, does not calculate the risks outside the project, especially since after so many difficulties we have almost eliminated them.”

However, a study on antiquities lighting approved by KAS, as announced by the Ministry of Culture, provides for the placement of entrances from the north and south of the station at street level with inconspicuous and transparent materials for viewing antiquities. Inclined canopies with glass structures will provide protection for the station and the archaeological site, on the one hand, and an unobstructed view of neighboring 15th-century monuments, the Hamza Bey mosque and Bezesteni, on the other.

The archaeological site will be visible to passengers when they descend to level -2 to purchase tickets and then onto the platform. The concern now for both archaeologists and the scientific world is the unprecedented repositioning of immovable finds in order to convey as accurately as possible the original image of the city island of late antiquity, while at the same time illuminating the History of Thessaloniki in an understandable way. This is an unprecedented, both by Greek and international standards, detachment project – the repositioning of a palimpsest building complex that concentrates 23 centuries of Thessaloniki’s history, primarily documenting the secular past of the Byzantine world. It remains to be seen how the archaeological service will highlight the treasures acquired by Thessaloniki so that the public can admire up close what YPPO says is “the largest international archaeological site included in a technical project for public benefit.”