UPDATE: President Tasoulas opens restored Nicopolis as UNESCO file moves forward

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President Konstantinos Tasoulas has inaugurated completed restoration works at ancient Nicopolis, returning the site to the public as Greece advances its UNESCO World Heritage bid.

The ceremony marks a fuller picture than earlier ministry briefings: new rooms in the palace, conserved hunting and marine mosaics, and a funded third phase at the Great Theatre.

Culture Minister Lina Mendoni said a preliminary UNESCO dossier has already been submitted. Nicopolis, she said, records the passage from the Hellenistic world to Rome and then to Christianity, in a landscape that is still largely intact.

National goal, one file

Mendoni tied the works to Recovery Fund and NSRF money and to planned climate-protection studies with other ministries and universities.

She noted that in seven years of the Mitsotakis government Greece submitted three UNESCO nominations — Zagori, the Minoan palatial centres of Crete and Olympus — and all three were inscribed. Nicopolis, she said, is a “national goal.” Competing claims of ownership of the bid, she warned, can damage a process that needs a single file.

A bypass built by the Region of Epirus now keeps the national road out of the ruins and treats the site as one monument. Mendoni thanked Governor Alexandros Kachrimanis, the Ephorate of Antiquities of Preveza, Mayor Nikos Georgakos and ministry teams.

Great Theatre: Phase 2 done, Phase 3 funded

Phase 2 cost €3.38 million under NSRF 2014–2020 (Epirus programme). Crews cleared fill, repaired the lower cavea and retaining walls, and placed temporary steel shoring on the stage building.

Phase 3 entered NSRF 2021–2027 on 8 April 2026, budgeted at €3.5 million: stage house and paraskenia, orchestra, more seats, disabled access, drainage, and remaining excavation and records. The Augustan theatre, rebuilt in the 2nd century AD, seated about 8,000.

Palace: 36 rooms found

Recovery Fund works (€503,452) on the Palace — the House of Georgios Ekdikos — uncovered 36 further rooms, repaired walls and re-erected two columns. Conservators treated Nicopolis’s only surviving wall mosaic, in the Small Nymphaeum.

The house covers about 10 stremmata, a full Roman block, on several levels, with repairs from the 1st to the 7th century AD.

Basilica A: hunts and the sea

A €550,000 Recovery Fund project conserved mosaics at Bishop Dometios’s Basilica A and at Basilica IV and built an accessible path around Basilica IV.

Basilica A’s floors show plants, animals, hunting scenes and marine subjects. Inscriptions naming Dometios help date the church.

Metropolitan Chrysostomos of Nicopolis and Preveza, MPs Spyros Kyriakis and Kostas Barkas, Kachrimanis, Georgakos, Ephorate head Anthi Angeli and local and military officials attended. The Preveza children’s choir Armonia, directed by Anelia Stefanova, closed the event.

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• Title: President Opens Restored Nicopolis as Greece Pushes UNESCO Bid
• Slug: nicopolis-restoration-tasoulas-unesco-update
• Meta: President Tasoulas opened restored works at ancient Nicopolis, including palace rooms, basilica mosaics and the next phase of the Great Theatre.
• Tags: Nicopolis, Konstantinos Tasoulas, Lina Mendoni, UNESCO, Preveza, Great Theatre, Georgios Ekdikos, Basilica A mosaics, Epirus

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