Aigai at Vergina: the Royal Tombs and the Polycentric Museum

The short answer

Aigai, the first capital of the Macedonian kingdom, is visited at Vergina, and it is not one building. Visit Greece says excavations in 1977 brought the city to light and that UNESCO declared the area a World Heritage Site in 1996.[5] Today its parts are run as one institution, the Polycentric Museum of Aigai: the Ministry of Culture and Sports' museums directorate says the Royal Tombs display, the Central Museum Building and the Aigai archaeological site together make it up.[3]

The same directorate says one ticket covers five parts: the Central Museum Building, the Royal Tombs and their display of treasures, the royal cluster of the Temenids in the necropolis, the ancient theatre and the Palace of Aigai.[4][3] Hellenic Heritage lists separate contacts for the Main Museum Building, the Museum of the Royal Tombs and the Palace, and describes the Palace as a separate building near the Museum of the Royal Tombs:[1] these are separate places on the ground, not rooms of one museum.

XTOUR suggests planning Aigai from Thessaloniki. That is a suggestion, not a relation in XTOUR's record for Aigai, which links it to no destination, and not a statement that Aigai is in Thessaloniki; XTOUR gives no travel times.

What Aigai was

Visit Greece traces settlement at Vergina back to the third millennium BC and explains the name Aigai as a place of many flocks. Citing Herodotus, it says the Temenid clan from Argos made Aigai the seat of their dynasty, and that the city was the administrative and artistic centre of Macedonia for three centuries, until the 4th century BC.[5]

Philip II died there. Hellenic Heritage says that in 336 BC, during his daughter's wedding, he entered the theatre of Aigai without his personal guard and was struck down by his own bodyguard, Pausanias.[1] Visit Greece names the Royal Tombs, the Palace, the theatre, the sanctuary of Eukleia and the fortified acropolis as the monuments of the site.[5]

The Museum of the Royal Tombs

The directorate describes it as an underground protection shell in the form of a tomb made of soil, which surrounds and incorporates the royal tombs, their wall paintings and the objects and offerings found in them.[3] Hellenic Heritage says it resembles an earthen tumulus, is entered by a stone passage, and is arranged so that the visitor passes from the funerary stelae and grave goods of ordinary people towards the royal household.[1]

Hellenic Heritage identifies one of the tombs as Philip II's, captioning its façade as the tomb of Philip II, and describes a golden wreath of 313 oak leaves and 68 acorns and a golden larnax for his bones weighing 11 kilograms.[1] Visit Greece mentions golden larnakes adorned with the sixteen-pointed star and chryselephantine couches among the finds.[5] XTOUR reports the identification of the tomb as Hellenic Heritage gives it.

The Palace, the theatre and the necropolis

Hellenic Heritage presents the Palace of Aigai as the counterpart to the tombs, a building designed to serve the public life of the city rather than the royal family's private life, organised around a peristyle that deliberately placed the king on the same footing as those around him.[1] The theatre where Philip II was killed is on the same ticket, as is the royal cluster of the Temenids in the necropolis, according to the directorate.[3]

XTOUR does not know how the visitor moves between these parts or whether any of them has a separate entrance time.

The Central Museum Building

The newest part, the Central Museum Building, is described by the directorate as the gateway to both the Polycentric Museum and the archaeological site. Its first temporary exhibitions, "Aigai Memory" and "Oikoumeni Antidoron", opened at the end of 2022; it has a permanent semi-outdoor exhibition of sculpture from the city's sanctuaries, and the upper floor of the palace's facade has been reconstructed in its large atrium. The directorate adds that it will host the headquarters of a digital museum, "Alexander the Great, from Aiges to Oikoumeni".[4]

Hellenic Heritage says the main building avoids rows of numbered display cases and instead builds a picture of the city from themed ensembles: funerary customs, the animals of the court, adornment, building materials and weapons.[1]

The ticket, as the official pages describe it

The pages agree on a single ticket but describe it at different widths.

• The directorate's pages for the Royal Tombs and for the Central Museum Building both say the ticket includes the Central Museum Building, the Royal Tombs display, the Temenid royal cluster, the ancient theatre and the Palace.[4][3]
• Hellenic Heritage's official ticket store sells one product, named "Visit the Polycentric Museum of Aigai (Royal Tombs - Display of Treasures)", and says timed entry is required. Its terms say a ticket is valid for a single entry on the date and time chosen, can be changed up to two hours before the visit, at most twice, and is non-refundable; large luggage, food and professional photography or filming are not permitted.[2]

XTOUR has not read a page that says which part of the museum the timed slot applies to, or whether the other parts are entered on the same date only. Hellenic Heritage's Aigai page itself does not list what the ticket covers.

Hellenic Heritage and the directorate disagree on winter free-admission days: Hellenic Heritage lists free admission on the first and third Sunday of each month from November to March,[1] while the general visitor information printed on the directorate's Royal Tombs page lists only the first Sunday of each month in the same period. Both list a Tuesday closure in winter and a later Tuesday opening in summer.[1][3] XTOUR does not resolve the free-day difference and does not restate hours or prices.

Thessaloniki as a suggested base

The directorate lists the Polycentric Museum under Central Macedonia, with its address at Vergina in Imathia.[3] XTOUR's reading is that Thessaloniki, the only one of its Greek destinations in Central Macedonia, is the place to plan Aigai from; its record for Aigai still names no base. Vergina is not part of Thessaloniki, and XTOUR has no routing data for the journey between them. The city's own monuments are covered in the guide to Thessaloniki's Roman and Byzantine monuments.

What XTOUR does not know

XTOUR does not publish opening hours, prices, travel times or accessibility for any part of Aigai. The directorate links the museum's own website, aigai.gr, which XTOUR has not been able to read, so nothing here comes from it. XTOUR does not know which part of the museum is entered first, or whether the timed slot governs the whole visit.

For the country's other planning bases, see the Greece travel guide.