PATRAS, Old Hospital, Koryllon Lane - 2006

Patras. Old Hospital, Koryllon Lane (property of A. Ropalidou). L. Papacosta (Στ’ ΕΠΚΑ) reports the discovery of a 6m-long section of Hellenistic-Roman cobbled street (4.6m wide), running north-south. A valuated sewer was exposed on the west side of the road, plus five further secondary channels some of which had been damaged by later interventions from the Ottoman period until the 19^th century (noting two rubbish pots). Roman retaining walls bounded the road to east and west. The eastern wall (the eastern face of which was in opus testaceum and the western in opus mixtum) also served as the exterior wall of a roadside building which, in the absence of any threshold, does not appear to have been accessed from the street. This was built over a Hellenistic structure of larger river stones: two rooms were investigated, with a destruction layer. The western retaining wall was a particularly tall, strong structure, 0.75m wide and over 2,2m high, with a buttress and beam-casings on the west side: it supported the terrace along which the road ran. Both faces were in opus testaceum. A later wall, containing spolia, in the western part of the plot divided two rooms (4 and 5) which were partially excavated: the larger (4) contained a floor mosaic which was earlier than the diving wall (under which it ran). On a white background, framing bands surrounded a central scene which extended north-northwest of the plot, beneath the neighbouring road and house. Only the southeast corner of the frame was visible, with (moving successively inwards) a black band, an astragalus, a spiral motif and a garland. A plaster-lined channel cut across the floor. In a later phase, a round kiln was built in the southeast corner of the room (with the mosaic as its floor); originally 1.5m in diameter, the northern half was destroyed during the 19^th century, the floor broken up, and thereafter a clay-lined rubbish pit opened. A second such pit dug into the northeast corner of room 4 also caused great damage to the floor.