Macedonia

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis inaugurated the recently restored Palace of Aigai in northern Greece on Friday.

With an area of approximately 15,000 square meters, it was the largest building in classical Greece.

The project to maintain and restore the Palace of the Aigai lasted 16 years and was completed in 2023 with a total budget of 20.3 million euros.

It was the largest building of classical Greece: the palace where Alexander the Great was proclaimed king before he launched a conquest that took him as far as modern-day Afghanistan.

The Palace of Aigai in northern Greece was fully reopened Friday following a 16-year renovation that cost more than 20 million euros and included financial support from the European Union.

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (third from left) stressed on Friday that the Palace of Aigai in northern Greece is testimony to the "timeless Greek identity of Macedonia through the ages." Attending the inauguration of the recently restored Palace of Aigai, Mitsotakis noted the "great honor" he feels as prime minister to associate his name and that of his government with the emblematic rest

Alexander the Great was proclaimed king there & the same columns that the visitor sees today “heard” the Macedonians soldiers rhythmically calling out his name

Last December was unusually warm in Greece, while in almost half of the country it was the hottest in 15 years. This was the case in Thessaly, Macedonia and Thrace, Crete and the Aegean islands, while overall, at the national level, the heat was at "extremely high levels" compared with the 2010-2019 average, Meteo.gr reported.

A 42-year-old man was arrested in the town of Florina, northern Greece on drug-related charges on Wednesday. 

The arrest followed a coordinated operation, as the suspect was wanted under a European arrest warrant. 

The apprehended individual was brought before the Public Prosecutor of the Court of Appeals of Western Macedonia.

The head of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Imathia, Angeliki Kottaridis, has refuted a claim this week by influential Byzantine scholar Helene Glykatzi-Ahrweiler that the tomb in Vergina, in northern Greece, is not that of Philip II of Macedonia but of his son, Alexander the Great, the 4th century BC warrior king.

The European Investment Bank (EIB), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the European Union announced on Tuesday a 560 million euro ($613.87 million) financing package for North Macedonia to build a railway line to neighboring Bulgaria.

Students and police forces engaged in a tense standoff, which at times spilled over, on Friday outside a hotel in Kavouri on the southern coast of Athens where a meeting of university deans was taking place. 

Some 800 students were protesting against the establishment of private universities. 

Some 240 antiquities and historical items from 27 museums in Greece and abroad and four private collections comprise the new exhibition on the 338 BC Battle of Chaeronea, which opens at the Museum of Cycladic Art (MCA) in Athens on Thursday.