AIGION, Aigialeos and Riga Pheraiou Streets - 2006

Aigion. Aigialeos and Riga Pheraiou Streets (A.V. Vasilopoulou property). A. Vordos (Στ’ ΕΠΚΑ) reports the discovery of dense, superimposed settlement remains dating from the Hellenistic period to the sixth century AD.

Remains of Hellenistic houses in the middle of the plot comprise walls badly damaged by later construction, plus the base of a pithos. In the north of the plot lay part of a bath belonging to a luxurious villa urbana - the caldarium (with seven rows of square columns, four in each row), the tepidarium, water channels, and corridors. One room of the villa itself (3 x 3m) was revealed, with a marble floor, a marble-clad bench around the walls, and in situ along the south wall, a marble bath-tub with engraved shell motifs on the exterior. The building dates to the first and second centuries AD, a time (following the settlement of Italian merchants in the expanding city) when a number of rich residences were built at Aigion.

Late Roman domestic structures have large rooms with floors in opus figlinum. The largest room contained a sporadically preserved floor mosaic: the central scene, now lost, was framed with a band of start shapes (diamonds cut by squares) containing circles and crosses.

Finds include a marble statue of Aphrodite (missing the head) and a marble stele with a scene of a libation being poured by the heroised deceased.