Dig at Mieza Brings Aristotle’s School for Alexander into View

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Photographs from the dig at ancient Mieza, near Naoussa, are circulating widely. Historical sources place Aristotle there in the 4th century BC, teaching Alexander the Great and other sons of the Macedonian elite.

Work began in 2024 on about 30 acres, led by archaeologist Angeliki Kottaridi. The team is uncovering how a gymnasium worked: lessons, sport and the daily life of young nobles.

Kottaridi calls it the royal gymnasium Philip II built to train the next political and intellectual class — “the very place where Aristotle taught Alexander the Great and the young Macedonians who would go on to become leaders across the known world.”

“More than 2,300 years later, we are bringing this extraordinary place back to light,” she wrote. “The discoveries are already exceeding our expectations. And the story of Mieza has begun to travel far beyond the excavation itself.” She points readers to her scholarly article that identified the site as the Royal Gymnasium of Mieza, the paper that started the systematic dig.

Mieza sits between the royal cities of Aigai and Pella. Plutarch is the main ancient text that ties the complex to Aristotle’s school. The architecture recalls the palace at Aigai. The complex links to a theatre. Its size and finish support that reading.

Sources say the setting was handsome and the routine hard: long training, body and mind, for kings and soldiers.

Finds so far include parts of the peristyle palaestra and the didaskaleion. Inside sits a three-part block of more than 160 square metres: a vestibule and two andrones (dining rooms) with couches and mosaic floors in the Aigai manner; lecture rooms with stone desks; covered walks; and a roofed running track, the xystos, about 200 metres long — at least a stade, standard for later gymnasia.

Other objects: coins, pottery, styluses, architectural pieces, and a fragment of a Panathenaic amphora of the type that held oil for athletes.

In the field with Kottaridi are archaeologists Maria Parziali and Dr Tasos Kakamanoudis. The research team includes Dr Anastasia Georgiadou and Professor Panagiotis Iossif. Emeritus Professor Grigoris Tsokas and his team are running geophysical surveys. Conservator Aggeliki Georgiadou handles finds on site, with conservator Stergios Pitoulias. The mayor of Naoussa, Nikos Koutsogiannis, is backing the project.

“Step by step, layer by layer, Mieza is revealing its secrets,” Kottaridi wrote. “And this is only the beginning.”

Sources: Angeliki Kottaridi, field update on the Royal Gymnasium of Mieza.

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