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Modern Description: Coastal road on S side signposted for Agios Nikolaos church. Walls and towers are preserved NW and SW of the chapel of Agios Nikolaos on the summit of the promontory E of the chemical plants. "In 1960, the Agios Nikolaos peninsula, named after the church on the summit of the plateau, had been the focus of the first excavations by Herman Mussche, at that time being a Belgian member of the Ecole Française d’Athènes. He investigated the maritime fortress that the Athenians had constructed here in the first year of the 93rd Olympiad (408/407 BC), at the end of the Peloponnesian War. Its strategic position, with two harbours to both sides of the Peninsula and controlling the coastal sea route from the northern Aegean to Cape Sounion, cannot be underestimated. These excavations were swiftly published in the Bulletin de Correspondance Hellenique of 1961. Ceramics that could be dated to the late 5th and 4th century BC seemed to confirm the chronology of the fortifications of Thorikos as suggested by Xenophon (Hellenica I, 2, 1). The fortifications became obsolete in the Hellenistic period, giving way to a metallurgical installation and few graves dug into a now abandoned small gate (poterne C). In 2013, the plateau around the Agios Nikolaos church was investigated by Ghent University with a Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), yielding indications for the position of the easternmost tower of the fortifications." (https://www.thorikos.be/thorikos-the-site/#agios-nikolaos)
Wikidata ID: Q117350219
Trismegistos Geo: 37810

Info: ToposText editors

(JBK)

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