The capital of ancient Macedonia, and Alexander’s birthplace, was Pella, which now lies many miles inland but was originally a port, connected to the Aegean Sea via a lagoon. Archaeologists have been excavating in Pella since the early twentieth century and have revealed sprawling townhouses, broad avenues, lavish bathhouses, sanctuaries overflowing with offerings, and a huge agora, or marketplace, one of the largest in the ancient world. Some of the richest houses, including the House of Dionysus, were adorned with intricate river-pebble mosaics depicting hunts and mythological scenes. These findings indicate that, at its height, Pella rivaled the grandeur of other great cities of the Hellenistic age (323–31 B.C.)—Alexandria in Egypt, and Pergamon and Antioch in Anatolia, or modern Turkey. But much remained to be discovered.

In 2021, archaeologists from the Ephorate of Antiquities of Pella and the University of Michigan launched the Pella Urban Dynamics Project. Through new surveys and excavations, they hope to further investigate the city’s history and understand how its inhabitants lived. They are also studying Pella’s wider connections. “How did the city work in relation to the larger region?” asks archaeologist and project codirector Lisa Nevett of the University of Michigan. “How did it relate to peer cities with which it was interacting? We’re trying to get away from viewing these places as just sites and see them as cities.”

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The majority of Pella’s visible ruins date to the Hellenistic period. A goal of the project is to find evidence of the city dating to the Classical period (480–323 B.C.), the Pella that Alexander would have known. Over the past few years, the team has used geophysics in the hunt for answers. “We started by surveying the area south of the Hellenistic city, where, according to the ancient sources, there was a lagoon or wetlands in the Late Classical period,” says archaeologist and project codirector Elisavet Tsigarida of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Pella. “The results were very good. We’ve been able to reconstruct the south coastline and a small island, Phacos, that was connected to the city by a wooden bridge.” Phacos, according to the Roman historian Livy, was the site of a citadel and treasury. The island was one of Pella’s most recognizable features, and the team believes that the core of the Classical city was located on the mainland facing it. Alexander’s Pella appears to have been small in comparison to its later Hellenistic incarnation and was focused around the waterfront. More than two millennia ago, it would have been alive with the sights and sounds of harbor life—fishers hauling in their daily catch, ships unloading their wares, merchants selling everything from metalwork to wine.

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The team has also begun to investigate Pella’s royal palace—Alexander’s likely childhood home. This vast complex, covering nearly 20 acres, was located on a low hill and included numerous buildings terraced into the slope. In 2017, they started to excavate and conserve the buildings. But their work has been far from straightforward. “The poor preservation of the buildings is the biggest challenge,” says Tsigarida. This, she explains, is primarily due to pillaging by the Romans in the second century B.C., the use of the area throughout the Byzantine period, and plunder of buildings in modern times. Despite the state of the ruins, archaeologists have determined that two adjoining courtyard buildings at the center of the complex, both dated to the mid-fourth century B.C., were among the palace’s most important structures. “So far, the project has finished excavating one building where the king received representatives of other cities or states, and where he performed rites for the continuity and well-being of the state,” Tsigarida says. This was also the building where the huge andron, a hall for symposia, or drinking parties, was located and where all royal decisions were made. Excavations are underway in the other courtyard building and in the palace’s palaestra, or exercise yard, where a large swimming pool has recently been discovered. It may soon be possible to walk Pella’s corridors of power, as the young Alexander once did.

Alexander was born in 356 B.C. and grew up in a world that was rapidly changing. His father’s reign, which began in 360 B.C., brought wealth and prestige to Pella. Macedonian kings could be polygamous, and Philip pushed the custom to extremes, taking seven wives in all. Olympias, Alexander’s mother and Philip’s fourth or fifth wife, was a Molossian princess from Epirus in present-day northwestern Greece. Her position in the ultracompeтιтive royal household relied on Alexander, her only son, remaining the favored heir. Macedonian succession could often be highly contested and depended on who had the strength, experience, and support to seize the opportunity. There were other royal male children, and the prospect that more could be born was ever-present. Philip’s extensive military campaigning also put him at constant risk of death.

The young prince’s education began when he was around the age of seven. He was surrounded by an army of tutors who taught him the Greek staples of reading, writing, music, and athletics. Homer’s epics were already established classics, and Alexander had a special relationship with the Iliad—his mother’s family ᴀsserted that they could trace their ancestry back to the Greek hero Achilles. A properly educated Macedonian prince was also required to be proficient with horses, and Alexander became a gifted equestrian. The first-century A.D. biographer Plutarch reports that, on one occasion, when Alexander was 11 or 12, he tamed a stallion called Bucephalus, a feat no one else had accomplished. Philip witnessed this event and, according to Plutarch, responded with the prophetic words, “My boy, you must find a kingdom which is your equal. Macedonia is too small for you.” 

A few years later, Alexander embarked on his secondary education. At this time, he likely entered the school of the royal pages, a Macedonian insтιтution that brought aristocratic boys from across the kingdom to court, where they were educated at the state’s expense. (See “Time for School.”) The school was either founded or reformed by Philip and combined liberal studies with intensive military training that aimed to produce men who were of use to king and kingdom. At any one time, there were around 150 boys between 14 and 18 years of age in attendance. During this period in his life, Alexander was tutored for some time by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. In his biography of Alexander, Plutarch writes that their lessons took place at the nymphaeum, or sanctuary of the nymphs, in Mieza, a Macedonian city some 35 miles west of Pella.

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The sanctuary was discovered in the 1960s, hidden amid lush vegetation and bordered by a fast-running stream. At the time, it was thought to be the site of the school of the royal pages. The nymphaeum consists of a large outcrop of volcanic rock that was deliberately carved away. There are remnants of a covered walkway, parts of columns, and three natural caves. But, archaeologist Angeliki Kottaridi, director of the Ephorate of Antiquities of Imathia, is not convinced that the sanctuary functioned as the royal school. “I’m sure you can’t teach, feed, and house 150 students there,” she says. Kottaridi also believes that Alexander’s time at the school was far different from that idealized in the ancient sources. “It’s a very romantic approach to envision Aristotle and his student sitting and discussing metaphysics,” she says. “It wasn’t so. It was a very harsh education intended to produce warriors, and above all to produce officers capable of commanding the army.”

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Kottaridi suggests the school may actually have been housed in a mᴀssive courtyard building to the northeast. This structure was excavated in the 1980s, and at first, Kottaridi explains, the archaeologists thought they were investigating a sanctuary of Asclepius, the god of healing and medicine. Then, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, researchers thought they were exploring a market, until it came to their attention that they were outside the city limits. “We didn’t find any housing, the theater is there, and we have graves,” Kottaridi says, all indications of a location outside the city walls. She believes this structure is a type of school building known as a gymnasium. The size of the complex, some 500,000 square feet, suggests that it was more than just an exercise facility. Usually situated outside city walls, gymnasiums played a key role in adolescent education in the Greek world—the Academy in Athens, where Plato taught, and the Athenian Lyceum, where Aristotle taught, were public gymnasiums. The Mieza complex includes a grand entranceway, banqueting rooms, and a suite of oblong halls that may have been used as barracks. Based on pottery found at the site and the complex’s architectural style, archaeologists have dated it to the mid-fourth century B.C. and believe it was the setting for Alexander’s time under the tutelage of Aristotle.

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