---

Modern Description: Visible in a sunken area below the pine trees across Grigoríou V Street to the northeast of the Casa Romana and Central Baths, is the base of the Altar of Dionysos, which faced due east with a ramp for access from the west. This would have been a low structure of a broad Π shape, with two levels in the interior so as to provide a wide ledge for offerings, surrounded by a flat cornice, with a carved relief running in segments just below depicting an Amazonamachia with Dionysos and his followers (now in the Antiquarium of the Knights' Castle). This design and decoration has led to the suggestion that the altar and its temple were gifts from the Attalid rulers of Pergamon in the 2nd century BC.
A small, Doric temple—possibly the one dedicated to Dionysos— stood just to the north and east. Elements of its entablature, as well as a fragment of an elaborate caryatidlike figure, lie on the ground in the vicinity.
The surroundings are dotted with new areas of excavation. North along Vasilíou Pávlou Street can be seen (right) the southern extremity of the agorá at the point where its clearly defined colonnade base turns west; to the east on Víronos Street has been revealed an area of civic buildings and workshops—one of which was for the production of pigments, including an early manufactured colour used extensively in wall paintings known as ‘Egyptian Blue'; while, in the park to south of the church of Aghia Paraskeví, are the remains of an apsidal structure of the late Roman period. However, the finds in this area are not all from the Hellenistic period: Bronze Age houses have been revealed at a site beside the intersection of Pisándrou and Kleopátras Streets, 100m to the west. Excavations continue all over the town—many in the residential area around Argyrokastrou Street, to the west of the acropolis hill.
Wikidata ID: Q38281524
Trismegistos Geo: 2796

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

---