All the preparatory work before reconstruction begins on a major ancient public building on the island of Delos has been completed, the ministry of Culture announced on Thursday.

The reconstruction of the marble Stoa of Philip V is being funded by the Paul and Alexandra Canellopoulos Foundation at a total cost of 550,000 euros, and the work will be undertaken by the Ephorate of Antiquities of the Cycladic Islands.

The Stoa of Philip II, one of the first monuments that the visitor to the archaeological site of Delos meets, is located south of the temple of the Sanctuary of Apollo and, along with the South Stoa, defines the Sacred Way, which ends in the Propylaea. The 11,000-square-meter building, which is to be restored, is built entirely of marble and was erected at the end of the 3rd century / early 2nd cent. B.C. A few years later it was extended across the west and along to the north. Nowadays the building is preserved only at the foundation level, but a scattered array of ancient architectural members is preserved, which allows and encourages its restoration. Thus, this important patronage of the King of Macedonia on the Holy Island of Apollo will be able to be restored using a large percentage of his original material.

The first phase of the works took place in the middle of the summer and involved cleaning inside the building, its extension and the surrounding area, work required first to capture the existing state of the monument and to gather the architectural members belonging to the monument. Numerous identification, counting and cataloging of the ancient members within the building’s outline and extension were also made, and the architectural members to be used in the restoration began to be designed.

During the second phase of the works, in the middle of autumn, the dense vegetation in the inaccessible marshy area to the west of the Stoa, 600 sq. Meters. where, according to archival material, at the beginning of the 19th century many architectural members of the building and its extension were deposited. The image of the scattered ancient material after the cleansing was impressive, as the number of members reached 1,000, of which around 900 were architectural members of the Stoa. The laborious work of methodical hauling, matching and temporary sorting by type was carried out by qualified personnel using a large telescopic crane that arrived on the island with an open-air ferry from Paros.

In December, the third phase of the works, during which they were discovered (through dense vegetation), were identified and recorded the remaining unregistered architectural members (approx. 300) located in two other areas near the port. At the same time, the three-dimensional mapping of the broken architectural members to be used in the restoration to build the supplements began.

The work for the restoration of the Lodge of Philip II is expected to continue at an intensive pace in 2018, aiming at upgrading the special and sensitive area of Delos with the rendering of the third dimension to a remarkable monument of antiquity.