Philippi
— — the field where Europe first heard the gospel.
Not only on a wall.
“An ancient city in eastern Macedonia, about fifteen kilometres northwest of Kavala on the plain below Mount Orbelos. Philip II of Macedon founded the city in 356 BCE for the gold of nearby Mount Pangaion. The plain outside the walls held the decisive battle of 42 BCE. The Apostle Paul preached here in the late 40s; the ruins of the basilicas that followed still stand among the columns and the paved Roman road. from the studio
Philippi, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Philippi is an archaeological site in the regional unit of Kavala, Eastern Macedonia and Thrace, about fifteen kilometres northwest of the modern port city of Kavala and adjacent to the village of Krinides. The site lies on the plain below Mount Orbelos and was founded in 356 BCE by Philip II of Macedon, who took the existing Thasian colony of Krenides for the gold of nearby Mount Pangaion and renamed it for himself. UNESCO inscribed Philippi on the World Heritage list in 2016 for its layered Hellenistic, Roman, and Early Christian remains.
The plain outside the walls held the Battle of Philippi in October 42 BCE, where Mark Antony and Octavian defeated Brutus and Cassius in the final reckoning of the Roman civil wars after Julius Caesar's assassination. Octavian afterwards refounded the city as a Roman colony of veterans, Colonia Iulia Augusta Philippensis. About ninety years later, around 49 or 50 CE, the Apostle Paul preached here on his second missionary journey; the church he founded was the first Christian community on the European mainland, recorded in Acts 16.
The surviving ruins cover the Hellenistic walls, the Roman forum with its tribunal platform, two large Early Christian basilicas (Basilica A and Basilica B, both fifth and sixth centuries), the Octagon church complex built over a martyrium, and a well-preserved theatre cut into the acropolis hill. The paved Via Egnatia, the Roman trunk road from Dyrrachium to Byzantium, runs straight through the site. A small archaeological museum on the western edge holds finds from the colony and the cemeteries.