PATRAS - 3 Vyronos Street - 2002

Patras, 3 Vyronos Street (Sinou-Kakoulidi property). M. Stavropoulou-Gatsi and G. Alexopoulou (Στ’ ΕΠΚΑ) report on supplementary work in preparation for the expropriation of the site of the Late Roman bath complex discovered in 1975 on the neighbouring plot to the north (ADelt 30 [1975] Chr 99-100) and subsequently excavated on this plot (ADelt 49 [1994] Chr 214-15).

Two buildings on either side of a cobbled street are contemporary with the main construction phase of the bath and share the same monumental architectural style, but were not immediately associated with it. The wall of the façades may have had marble revetment, with 14m-long stylobates with four ionic columns by the street. These buildings may have rested partially on the street in view of the position of an earlier sewage pipe under the east building.

During the fourth and fifth century AD, significant incursions were made into the urban plan of Roman Patras. Part of a very large semi-circular building lay inside the west building (ca 20m in diameter, noting a further part on a plot on the opposite side of Vyronos Street): in its final phase, this building had a marble-chip floor. The road no longer continued to the south: by the south end of the west building, a surface was laid re-using a variety of architectural spolia, which extended an earlier floor in opus spicatum. The road still continued to the north, although two parallel walls on a different orientation were later built to create a new room or court which partially covered the road’s drainage channel.

There is thus no connection between these buildings and the bath complex, and the area between them must have been open space or the line of the approach to the bath from the road. The central part of the west building and hemispherical structure remains buried beneath Vyronos Street: a further, parallel street defining the other side of it was previously found at 19 Psilon Alonion and 2 Vyronos Streets.