Story
The story of Heraclea Lyncestis
In 1931, someone found a small bone ticket here, for a seat in the 14th row of a theatre that nobody had yet seen. The theatre itself was only uncovered in 1968: it had been built by the emperor Hadrian on a hill in the town centre.
You are standing in Heraclea Lyncestis, founded by Philip II of Macedon in the middle of the 4th century BC and named after the hero Heracles. It guarded a key route between Illyria and Macedonia, and later the main Roman road of the southern Balkans, the Via Egnatia, passed through it and kept the city wealthy.
Look for the floors of the Great Basilica: its mosaics of birds, trees and animals, made at the end of the 6th century, are counted among the finest early Christian art, and one appears on the 5000 denar banknote. After an earthquake in 518 AD, the people gradually left, and later Slavs built huts where the theatre had stood.
This story is compiled from Wikipedia and other open sources; dates and numbers are checked against the source. The text is shared under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence. Source ↗
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