Near to the east in a part of Ancient Greece in an Ancient land called Macedonian was born a son of Philip the Macedon whose legend name was Alexander....
Macedonian, for many, will always be known as the land of Alexander the Great.
Macedonian belongs to Northern Greece one of the most historic areas in Greece.
It was one of the wealthiest members of the Hellenic Federation more than 2,000 years ago, and still prospers in agriculture, industry, and trade today.
It includes the Chalkidiki peninsula, one of Greece’s most beautiful resorts and host to Mt. Athos, a totally independent religious community over 1,000 years old.
Macedonian’s capital is Thessaloniki,
Greece’s second - largest city which was founded as recently as 316 B.C.
by the Macedonian General Kassandros.
Today the city is best known as a Byzantine city, for the wealth of art and architecture that remained from the centuries when Thessaloniki was second only to Constantinople.

Recent archeological excavations at Derveni and Vergina (site of King Philip's tomb)
have turned up such remarkable artifacts
from the Macedonian period
that we consider Thessaloniki most notable for its Archeological Museum and nearby sites.

Vergina The wealth of gold funerary objects discovered at Vergina needs no explanation. The royal tomb and royal palace near the modern - day village of Vergina.
Dion About 80 klm.of Thessaloniki, at the foot of the magnificent Mt. Olympus, is the village of Dion. Recent excavations have releaved that this was an important religious center for worship of the gods of the sacred mount.
Much progress has been made in the excavations in recent years, filling the new museum with some very fine works.

ALEXANDER THE GREAT

In history there are few persons who can be termed Great
and even fewer who deserve to be so called.
But Alexander, the son of Philip, King of Macedonians, was truly Great.
He did not merely place his stamp on his era.
Rather, he has survived - he even "lives and reigns".
Alexander was a cultural reformer, not a militaristic invader. He instituted a multinational state comprised of equally - privileged individuals, for he was a liberator and not an enslaver. The people who became part of his empire were not considered minorities but retained their national identities.
The campaigns of Alexander the Great


signaled some momentous events in world history.
For one thing Europe was decidedly alleviated from an Asian threat as the vast Persian superpower met its end once and for all. Also the expansion and eventual predomination of the Greek language as the international instrument of communication, with its concomitant knowledge, as well as the opening to Greek philosophy, art, and civilization in general,
were extraordinary events of immense consequence for the future course of the entire world.
We have to agree with H.Bengston, that: " Neither the Roman empire, nor the triumphant route of Christianity - whose communities, at the end of ancient times, extended from Ireland to India - nor even the Byzantine Empire nor the Arabian civilization would have been created without Alexander the Great and his cosmogony works.

Nowadays, however sundry pseudo - political fabrications have arisen, the existence of which serves expediencies unrelated to historical truth and are suspicious and dangerous to stability and peace in the greater region. The fabricators attempt to usurp Alexander’s heritage through a self - baptism as his direct descendants.

Nevertheless, anyone with rudimentary historical knowledge is aware what Macedonian Hellenism and its genuine
representatives Philip, Alexander and Aristotle stand for. In history and in thought it is high civilization an inseparable segment of the grand Greek miracle.
Stelios Papathemelis
A former government minister and member of the Macedonian Studies Society