4. Solutions of the Debate

A solution for the extraordinary antiquities that were discovered during the construction of the Metro station Venizelos in Thessaloniki was found in a meeting held in the city, attended by the Minister of Culture and local authorities. The antiquities will be detached and repositioned where they were found, after the completion of the construction work of the Metro City.
According to the announcement of the Ministry of Culture , the solution was come to at yesterday's meeting includes the following points: A common component of all the participants in the meeting is the belief that we should go ahead and complete the Metro in the city of Thessaloniki. At the same time, however, all agreed that we need to protect and highlight the very important archaeological finds at Venizelos Station.

  On July 4, 2013 The director of the Center for Byzantine Studies , Modern Greek and Southeastern Europe at the School of Higher Studies in Social Sciences in Paris Paolo Odorico visited the Station with students of the Summer University of Byzantine studies. Paolo Odorico said he has never seen anything like that relate to the Byzantine world, saying while it is important to keep the findings in the point they were found at, both for scientific and for the good of the tourist center, and in the long term, for economic benefits .

 "The destruction of the findings to the metro station will provide an important sack in the past and in the present of city . The recovery, and promotion of these findings are a scientific, financial and touristic investment for today's and especially tomorrow's Thessaloniki" said Paolo Odorico.


Article discussed in: Thessaloniki Arts And Culture

3. The Dilema in the Findings

A few years ago, a thousand graves — some with treasure — were found. More recently a 230-foot section of an ancient road built by the Romans that was the city’s main travel artery nearly 2,000 years ago.

The subway works, started in 2006, present a rare opportunity for archaeologists to explore under the densely populated city – but have also caused years of delays for the project.

In 2008, workers on the Thessaloniki metro discovered more than 1,000 graves, some filled with treasure. The graves were of different shapes and sizes, and some contained jewelry, coins or other pieces of art.

A massive excavation project also took place during the 1990s in the capital, Athens, before the city’s new metro system opened in 2000.

Thessaloniki’s new subway is already four years behind schedule, due to the excavation work as well as Greece’s financial crisis. Thirteen stations will operate initially, before a 10-station extension is added later.

We read in BBC by Liz Klimas, a reporter, that many artifacts found in the excavation, from items such as gold hoops, benches, and thousands of everyday objects, up to whole churches, remnants of the glorious, long history of Thessaloniki, have come to light. The archaeologists and city authorities dream of a metro station combined with a subterranean museum, that will become a major tourist attraction and a constant reminder of the city's glorious past - a past lamentably hidden today by decades of anarchical construction and disastrous city planning.

Engineers with the company implementing the metro project, Attic Metro SA, however, say the two cannot exist together.

Keeping the ruins would mean scrapping the central subway station - and jeopardizing the entire 3.5bn-euro  EU-co-financed project - one of the few major public works under way in Greece's moribund economy.

Attiko Metro SA is armed with a decision by Greece's Central Archaeological Council, authorizing the transfer of the finds to another area. But removing a road complex from its original position is considered by some archaeologists to be tantamount to destroying it.

"Moving it would be catastrophic. A road is not a portable monument. It would lose all reason for being," said the director of the Thessaloniki Archaeological Museum, Polyxeni Veleni, to the reporter, according to BBC news.

"We realize how important the find is, but it is impossible to keep it there. Everything else is hot air. I respect the archaeologists, but I ask them to respect our expertise as well", Stratos Simopoulos, Greece's secretary general for public works, told the BBC. 

Article found in: Ancient Dilemma for Modern Greece

2. Ancient Gold Wreath

Another archeological finding that we saw on the media this year, was the wreath found in the diggings in Thessaloniki. It is the one depicted in the photo. We read in pathsorizonspr.gr that wreath of golden olive leaves seemingly worthy of Caesar himself was discovered during excavation in Thessaloniki (…) while preparing for a new subway tunnel — marking the ninth such wreath discovered in recent years.

The wreath was found “inside a large box-type Macedonian tomb on the head of a buried body” said the reporter. It was dated to the Early Hellenistic Era, at the end of the fourth — early third century B.C.

Moreover, we read in greekreporter.com that “back in June 2008, four gold wreaths decorated with olive leaves, gold earrings and other Hellenistic-era artifacts were discovered in one of the 700 tombs of an ancient graveyard unearthed during construction work for the subway in the Sintrivani district. The new gold finding, which was buried for 2,500 years, was taken to the workshops of the 16th Ephorate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities in Thessaloniki to be cleaned and studied.”

Article found in: Gold Wreath

1. Works Unearth 'Second Pompei'

Hello everyone! Welcome to my brand-new blog. This certain blog has been created for my Social Media class in college, and will be focusing on Archaeology in the media.

It is known that in Thessaloniki the subway constructions have not yet finished. The digging and constructing have been going on for many years, yet the work is still in progress. We read in greekreporter.com

that in Thessaloniki, an astonishing 28,000 items from the city's past were gathered thanks to the construction of the subway. The marble-paved Roman road, with a length of 82.50 metres and a width of 4 metres, with a square, is the most important discovery of the past year. It is located at Agia Sofia subway station, at the site of one of the 26 small towns around the Thermaikos Gulf which, in 315 BC, were united by King Cassander and created Thessaloniki.





The marble-paved road was unearthed during excavations for Thessaloniki's new subway system, which is due to be completed in four years. The road in the northern port city will be raised to be put on permanent display when the metro opens in 2016.

"We have found roads on top of each other, revealing the city's history over the centuries," said Tzanakouli, an archaeologist working on the project. She told The Associated Press the Roman road was about 1,800 years old, while remains of an older road built by the ancient Greeks 500 years earlier were found underneath it.



Tzanakouli said "The ancient road, and side roads perpendicular to it appear to closely follow modern roads in the city today."

This certain incident was published in many newspapers and websites, however, it was 'buried' in the historical / cultural or even 'life' sections of a website, and of course never made it as a front page. This made it difficult for the readers to find it, unless they manually searched for keywords, or browsed the aforementioned sections to the last entries.

Article Found in:Countless Treasures Found in Excavations