Vergina (Greek: Βεργίνα, Vergína [verˈʝina]) is a small town in Northern Greece, part of the Veria municipality in Imathia, Central Macedonia.

Vergina was established in 1922 in the aftermath of the population exchanges after the Treaty of Lausanne and was a separate municipality until 2011, when it was merged with Veroia under the Kallikratis Plan.

[4] Aigai has been awarded UNESCO World Heritage Site status as "an exceptional testimony to a significant development in European civilization, at the transition from classical city-state to the imperial structure of the Hellenistic and Roman periods".

[11] Archaeologic evidence shows that Aigai developed as an organized collection of villages, spatially representing the aristocratic structure of tribes centred on the power of the king.

From 513 to 480 BC Aigai was part of the Persian Empire, but Amyntas I managed to keep its relative independence, avoid satrapy and extend its possessions.

Life reached unseen levels of luxury and to meet the needs of the court merchants from all over the ancient world brought to Aigai valuable goods including perfume, carved ornaments and jewellery.

At the end of the 5th century Archelaus I brought to his court artists, poets, and philosophers from all over the Greek world; for example, it was at Aigai that Euripides wrote and presented his last tragedies.

Laid on an elaborate gold and ivory deathbed wearing his precious golden oak wreath, the king was surrendered, like a new Hercules, to the funeral pyre.

The bitter struggles between the heirs of Alexander in the 3rd century adversely affected the city; in 276 BC Gallic mercenaries of Pyrrhus plundered many of the tombs.

[18] In the 2nd to 5th centuries AD the population gradually moved from the foothills of the Pierian range to the plain, and all that remained was a small settlement whose name alone Palatitsia (palace) indicated its former importance.

The modern settlement of Vergina was established in 1922, between two preexisting villages, "Kutlesh" (Κούτλες, Koútles) and "Barbes" (Μπάρμπες, Bármpes), formerly part of the Ottoman Beylik of Palatitsia.

The town of Vergina was settled in the course of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey following the Treaty of Lausanne, by Greek families from Asia Minor.

The Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos became convinced that a hill called the Great Tumulus (Μεγάλη Τούμπα) concealed the tombs of the Macedonian kings.

Some artifacts excavated at Vergina may be treated as influenced by Asian practices or even imported from Achaemenid Persia in late 6th and early 5th centuries BC,[27] which is during the time Macedon was under the Persian sway.

[28] Tomb I also contained the remains of a woman and a baby, who Bartsiokas identified as Philip II's young wife Cleopatra Eurydice and their newborn child.

The main room included a marble chest, and in it was the Golden Larnax made of 24-carat gold and weighing 11 kilograms (24 lb), embossed with the Vergina Sun symbol.

In the room were also found the golden and ivory panoply of the dead, the richly carved burial bed on which he was laid and later burned and exquisite silver utensils for the funeral feast.

Above the Doric order entrance of the tomb is a magnificent wall painting measuring 5.6 metres (18 ft) representing a hunting scene, believed to be the work of the celebrated Philoxenos of Eretria, and thought to show Philip and Alexander.

The only wall painting in the tomb pictures the Abduction of Persephone by the God of the Underworld, the silent Demeter and the three unprejudiced Fates with Hermes, the Guide of Souls, leading the way, and a scared nymph witnessing the horrifying event.

The great tumulus was constructed at the beginning of the third century BC (by Antigonos Gonatas) perhaps over smaller individual tumuli to protect the royal tombs from further pillaging after marauding Galati had looted and destroyed the cemetery.

It has been suggested that the building was designed by the architect Pytheos of Priene, known for his work on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and for his views on urban planning and architectural proportions).

The Cluster of the Queens includes cist and pit tombs dating to the Greco-Persian Wars era, two of which probably belong to the mother and spouse of Alexander I: the all golden "Lady of Aigai" and her female relative, in whose funeral at least twenty-six small terracotta statues.