Olynthos

Olynthos was destroyed in 348 BC and never rebuilt, which froze a classical Greek town at a single moment and made it one of the most informative sites in Greece for how people actually lived. American excavations in the 1920s and 30s uncovered a planned city on the North Hill laid out on a strict grid, an early and unusually complete example of what ancient writers associated with Hippodamian planning: standard blocks of ten houses, each about seventeen metres square, with courtyards, andrones for male dining, bathrooms and drainage. Several floors keep pebble mosaics with mythological scenes, protected under shelters, including the celebrated Bellerophon panel. Walking the excavated streets gives a clear sense of a residential quarter rather than a monumental centre.

History

A Neolithic settlement was founded here in the 4th millennium BCE and thrived from 3000 to 2900 BCE, a farming community known only from archaeology; after it was abandoned the site was resettled in the 7th century BC and later taken by the Bottiaeans, a Thracian people driven out of Macedon by Alexander I. Olynthus, named after a son of Heracles or of Strymon, led the Chalcidian League from just before the Peloponnesian War and flourished from 432 BCE until Philip II of Macedon destroyed it in 348 BCE; it was finally abandoned in 316 BCE (Wikipedia, Olynthus).

The main sights

• The grid streets - a planned classical town laid out in regular blocks.
• The houses - courtyards, dining rooms and bathrooms in excavated plan.
• The pebble mosaics - fourth-century BC floors under protective shelters.
• The hill setting - the site above the plain with views to the gulf.

When to go

Spring and autumn; the hill is open and hot in summer, and there is little shade. Mornings are best for light on the mosaics.

Good to know

The remains stand knee-high, so the interest is in plan and detail rather than spectacle. Some mosaics are covered for protection outside the main season. Signage exists but a guidebook adds a great deal.

Nearby

Halkidiki's beaches are twenty minutes south; Thessaloniki lies an hour north.

Key facts