Aegae (Macedonia)
Aegae or Aigai (), also Aegeae or Aigeai (Αἰγέαι) was the original capital of the Macedonians, an ancient kingdom in Emathia in northern Greece. The city was also the burial-place of the Macedonian kings, the dynasty which sprang from the Temenid Perdiccas. It was built on a commanding and picturesque site near the modern town of Vergina. The seat of government was afterwards transferred to the marshes of Pella, which lay in the plain beneath the ridge through which the Lydias forces its way to the sea. But the old capital always remained the "hearth" (ἑστία, Diod. Excerpt. p. 563) of the Macedonian kingdom and the burial place for their kings. The body of Alexander the Great was to have reposed at Aegae, where his father Philip II of Macedon fell by the hand of Pausanias of Orestis but it was taken to Memphis through the intrigues of Ptolemy I Soter. The recently excavated palace is considered to be not only the biggest but, together with the Parthenon, the most significant building of classical Greece. In 1996, the archaeological site of Aigai was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List because of its monumental significance in Western civilization and exceptional