Aigai

Aigai was the first capital of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia, in the foothills of the Pierian Mountains between the modern towns of Vergina and Palatitsia in northern Greece. Its name comes from the word for goat, and Diodorus wrote that Perdiccas I founded it where an oracle at Delphi told him white-horned goats rest at dawn. Its burial ground has more than 300 tumuli, some of which, according to UNESCO, date from the 11th century BCE.

In the first half of the 5th century BCE Aigai flourished as the capital, and Archelaus I brought artists and poets from across the Greek world to his court; Euripides wrote and staged his last tragedies there. After the capital moved to Pella in the early 4th century BCE, Aigai remained the sacred city and royal burial place. Philip II was assassinated in its theatre during his daughter's wedding, and his son Alexander was proclaimed king on the spot. After the Romans overthrew the kingdom in 168 BCE the city was burned, and its people gradually moved down to the plain.

The site was rediscovered in the 19th century, and Léon Heuzey excavated there from 1861. In 1977 the Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos dug into the Great Tumulus and found that two of its four tombs had been undisturbed since antiquity. Andronikos identified Tomb II as that of Philip II, the identification UNESCO also gives. The site was inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1996.