Nicopolis was built on the neck of the peninsula between the Ambracian Gulf and the Ionian Sea. It was founded as a symbol of the great victory gained by Gaius Julius Caesar Octavius –later Roman emperor Augustus‒ against Marcus Antonius and Queen Cleopatra VII of Egypt, in the naval battle of Actium (31 B.C.).

Following his great victory, that ended the Roman civil war, Augustus decided to found Nicopolis, not only as a reminder of his victory but also as a control center of Western Greece along the city of Patras. The new city was formed by the relocation –in some cases by force‒ of residents of other cities (Cassope, Ambracia, Leucas etc.)

The emperor dedicated Nicopolis to god Apollo Actius or Actiacus. The Actian games –old local games of the Acarnanias‒ were re-founded and devoted to the god. Apollo was worshiped here with the epithets Leycadios (from Leycas), and Agyieus. In his sanctuary, cults of other gods were also established, i.e. of Poseidon and Ares, as an inscription found on the spot informs us. Among the cults of the city were those of Zeus, Dionysus, Hermes, Hephaestus, Asclepius, Hecate, Pan, Hercules and Attis. Dominant was the cult of Artemis, worshipped with the epithets Lafria, Soteira, Efesia. Two eastern cults are also known: the cults of Isis and of Cybele. The worship of the Roman emperor Octavian, founder of the city, was naturally prominent.

The city is mentioned in Roman written sources as ”Nicopolis romana colonia”, ”civitas libera Nicopolitana” (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 4,5; Tacitus, ann. 5,10) or ”colonia Augusta”.

The Sacred Landscape is part of the Proasteion (Suburb) and includes three public monuments; The Victory Monument, the Stadium and the Theater.

The monument, which marked a watershed event in the history of the ancient world, is mentioned in only a few lines of the ancient authors Dio Cassius and Suetonius. The architectural composition of the Trophy-Victory Monument hints at divine intervention in the naval battle’s outcome and at the ruler’s piety.

The complex extended amphitheatrically on two artificial levels over the slopes of the hill, where Augustus camped during the naval battle of Actium. On the lower level rose two parallel retaining walls, today in a ruinous state. Above the wall’s euthynteria are preserved anchor-shaped carvings into which the brass rams from the captured ships of Antony and Cleopatra were wedged (it is estimated there were a total of 36 rams). Higher up on the wall was the votive inscription of the monument, parts of which were found scattered throughout the area south of the retaining wall. The length of the inscription is calculated at about 54 meters. The text of the inscription is restored approximately thus:

“The Emperor Caesar, son of the divine Julius, following the victorious outcome of the war he waged for democracy in this region when he was consul for the fifth time and general for the seventh, and after the establishment of peace on sea and land, dedicated to Ares and Poseidon the camp from which he stormed against the enemy, which is now adorned with the spoils of ships”.

The retaining wall of the front of the monument, together with the vertical walls lost in the slope of the hill, shaped and provided counter-support like a podium to the second level, on which there was a Π-shaped porticus triplex with two rows of columns. The outer colonnade was Doric and the inner one, Corinthian. The portico’s walls were decorated with frescoes, with linear and vegetal motifs visible today.

The roofing consisted of Corinthian tiles, and a significant number of terracotta architectural members with relief decoration. On the long sides, the roof carried gutters (simas) with a relief of a lioness nursing the twins Romulus and Remus on either side of a waterspout in the form of a lioness’s head, or a representation of dolphins flanking a waterspout in the form of a dolphin’s head.

The center of the open space on the upper level was taken up by a monumental oblong altar from which the foundation is preserved. Thousands of marble fragments from the superstructure have been found around the foundation. Study of these fragments has shown that the altar was richly decorated. A short distance north of the altar and in a perfectly symmetrical relationship with it, the foundations of two square pedestals were found. On one of the pedestals, it is possible that the bronze statuary group of the donkey named Nikon and his drive Eutychos were erected. Octavian took his encounter with them at dawn on the day of the battle as a good omen (Plutarch, Antony 65.3).

Around the circumference of the atrium, the fragments of about thirty small vases, perforated at their base, were found. In Roman times, plants rooted in such vases (called ollae perforatae) were sold and transplanted into the ground together with their vases. Their symmetrical placement near the colonnades indicates the presence of an organized garden. The precinct’s sacred garden, like its monumental altar, would have been dedicated to Apollo, Augustus’s patron god.

In the 1st century AD, after the death of Augustus, a rectangular addition was built to the north side of the porticus. This area was in all probability devoted to the imperial cult (Aedes Augustalium).

The Stadium of Nicopolis was built at the foot of the sacred hill of Apollo south of the Victory Monument and between the Theater and Gymnasium. It was oval in plan, with an E-W orientation. The earthen embankments with sporadic remains of the substructure of seating, the ruins of the entrances, and the remains of the retaining walls that restrained the downward thrust of the embankments are preserved.

The unusual type of stadium with two sphendonai—a feature found in only a few stadia in Asia Minor—is referred to in the research as a “stadium-amphitheater” and considered to be a transitional type from the Greek stadium to the Roman amphitheater. According to one view, the Stadium of Nicopolis was the prototype of this type of stadiums.

The Roman theater οf Nicopolis was in the southern foothills of the sacred hill of Apollo, a short distance northeast of the Stadium. Oddly enough, the Theater is not mentioned by Octavian’s contemporary Strabo, although he does refer to the Stadium and the Gymnasium. Excavation has demonstrated that the Theater belonged to the building program of Augustus. The renovation of the monument dates to the first half of the 2nd century AD and was probably done by Hadrian.

The Roman architect Vitruvius (death 15 B.C.) in his handbook of architecture De Architectura, describes the morphological characteristics of the “ideal” theater in the Roman manner and the characteristics of Greek theaters in comparison to Roman ones.

The auditorium (koilon) of the Greek theater always rested directly on natural slopes following corresponding removal of earth and adjustments to the ground level. In Roman theaters the innovation of supporting the auditorium (cavea) on vaulted substructures founded on level ground appeared. This technical solution facilitated the choice of location foe erecting theaters in urban centers, since it was no longer necessary to search out natural slopes.

The tripartite arrangement of Greek theater -stage, orchestra, koilon- became united in a single building in the Roman theater. This consolidation resulted in the creation of a semicircular orchestra which did not form part of the scenic action, as the actors performed on the proscenium (pulpitum).

Moreover, in the Roman theater there were vaulted passages (aditus maximi) leading to the orchestra-which correspond to the parodoi of the Greek theater- while other vaulted passageways (vomitoria) were used for entering or exiting the auditorium. Between the orchestra and the proscenium there was a channel for the mechanism of the stage curtain (aulaeum). The aulaeum fell into the channel when the performance began and was raised when it finished. For this reason, the expression “aulea premutur” i.e. the curtain is lowered, signified the beginning of the performance.

A few meters from the east sphendone of the Stadium, excavation uncovered two grave monuments-mausoleums which formed part of a group of tomb monuments, the total number of which remains unknown. This was an important cemetery, since it was set in a prominent location inside the precinct where the sacred games were held. The two mausoleums lay approximately parallel to one another.

The northern one was temple-form and stood on a podium like Roman temples. Only its podium survives: it had a concrete core and stone facing, from which the euthynteria, a base with a concave-convex molding, and orthostates survive. On the west side of the building steps led to the pronaos, which on the basis of a column capital found in excavation is thought to have been Ionic. In the monument’s burial chamber there must have been stone sarcophagi on a platform around the perimeter, as is observed in similar funerary monuments in the north cemetery of Nicopolis. The mausoleum dates to about the second half of the 2nd century AD.

The second mortuary building, which is only a meter south of the first one, was rectangular in plan and built of brick. Its north wall had buttresses, among which three brick cist tombs have been found. Of the graves inside the burial chamber, four undecorated stone sarcophagi and a brick-built cist tomb survive.

Between the two mausoleums, five fragments of a marble sarcophagus with relief decoration were found. On three sides of the sarcophagus, the labors of Heracles are depicted in high relief. The sarcophagus contained at least three disturbed burials, the earliest of which dates to the second half of the 2nd century AD, i.e. it was contemporary with the construction of the sarcophagus.

A few meters northeast of the temple-form mausoleum, the wall of a third, brick-built mausoleum was identified. It is considered certain that in this same direction (towards the Theater) there are other grave monuments still covered by fill. These luxurious funerary monuments must have belonged to prominent members of the local community who were directly connected with the organization and administration of the Actian Games.

The ruins of wall masonry, primarily brickwork (opus testaceum) southwest of the Stadium are identified as the Gymnasium in the Suburb (Proasteion) mentioned by Strabo. Their proximity to the Stadium and two inscribed agonistic stelae dedicated to young athletes would argue for a fairly secure identification of these ruins the Gymnasium. A place for the athletes to exercise and prepare, the Gymnasium would have included an outdoor space with surrounding portico (the xystos), a series of rooms, a palaestra, and the requisite baths. The remains of buildings with a semicircular ground plan which may be made out at the west end of the field probably belonged to the Gymnasium’s baths.

At the site of the ruins, excavation revealed the rectangular podium (11.10 x 11.94 m.) of a mortuary building-mausoleum. Inside the podium, two brickwork chambers/chests (θήκες) were created. On the exterior, it carried a stone revetment of cornerstones in the pseudo-isodomic system (opus quadratum). In I. Papadimitriou’s 1940 excavations, many fragments of marble statues and architectural members with moldings (today lost) came to light. They included a large bifacial marble relief depicting a ship’s ram. While the place of the sculpture on the monument remains unknown, the reference to the battle of Actium is clear. Apparently the tomb belonged to some distinguished citizen of Nicopolis connected to the events at Actium either directly or through his ancestors.

About 570 meters south of the Stadium and west of the cemetery road, which after crossing the North Cemetery led to the Suburb (Proasteion), stood the ruins of an extensive bath complex, known in the past by the name “Bedenia”.

Various spaces were arrayed in a radial fashion around the imaginary axis of a large semicircular exedra. The central entrance to the exedra led to a rectangular hall with two facing apses. Two additional entrances on either side of the central one each led to respective rectangular halls. At the ends of the semicircular exedra, two vaulted corridors allowed passage to rooms with more complex plans where apses predominated.

The building was connected with the Aqueduct of the city through a branch that started from the central channel in the northwest at the foot of the hills of Michalitsi and then headed for the Gymnasium and the Baths.

Although the date of the Baths cannot be precisely determined without excavation, we are led to conclude that they belong to the Hadrianic age (117-138 AD), judging from the similarities of the complex at Nicopolis to the buildings of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli both in terms of plan as well as building techniques.

Roman surveyors (agrimensores or gromatici) implemented at Nicopolis the design principles that characterize the Roman cities of dividing the space into rectangular building blocks (insulae). This roman tradition had been subject to influences from the Greek colonies of South Italy. Before the building of a camp or city, the surveyors, using a topographic instrument called the groma, laid out two perpendicular streets, the N-S cardo maximus and the E-W decumanus maximus, which divided the site into four sections of approximately equal size (centuriae). Streets of smaller width (cardines-decumani) lying parallel to the main streets delimited the building blocks themselves. The buildings associated with the political Agora (i.e., the Forum) were normally at the intersection of the two main streets.

Excavations in Nicopolis have brought to light the start of the decumanus maximus at the West Gate, and a significant part of it between the House of the ekdikos Georgios and the south side of the Early Christian wall at the height of the so-called “Beautiful Gate”. Its extension towards the west outside the walls led to the port of Komaros. On the east it is not certain that it concluded at a gate, because before it drew near the wall, it diagonally encountered the road that passed through the Southeast Gate and ended at the large port at Vathi (Vathy). The road was paved with large rectangular limestone slabs, as evidenced by the part of it uncovered south of the House of the ekdikos Georgios, and it had sidewalks and a gutter carved into their slabs. Its width including sidewalks was 14.80 meters, while its length from the West Gate to the east wall is estimated at 1500 meters. The first parallel street (decumanus) to the north, which was narrower, ended at the East Gate.

Part of the central cardo (cardo maximus), which was 14.80 meters wide, has been uncovered 200 meters north of the Odeum. Excavations have identified the street’s sewer and a brick manhole.

Cardines bounded two houses, the House of Manius Antoninus and the House of the ekdikos Georgios, defining the width of the building block as 56.30 meters. At the House of Manius Antoninus, the east street was 7.40 meters wide and made of large limestone slabs, many of which had been removed and used in the construction of cist tombs. Investigation below the road surface revealed a large arched sewer (cloaca) where the drainage pipes from the house concluded. The sewer was built of stones of variable size, and had manholes for cleaning and checking on sewage. Two of the manholes revealed were covered with limestone paving slabs. At the west road, which also had a sewer, no paving was found due to contemporary interventions. The street that passed between the east side of the House of the ekdikos Georgios and Basilica A was 7.40 meters wide. The sewer and a manhole cover were found on this street, though almost no traces of its paving have survived.

The city had at least eleven cardines east of the central cardo and six to its west. It is calculated that there were six (6) decumani perpendicular to these, symmetrically placed north and south of the central decumanus. It thus appears possible that the city was divided into rectangular building islands measuring 56 x 165 meters.

Excavation has shown that creating the rural land registry and laying out the urban plan of Nicopolis belonged to the same plan, because the deviation from the N-S axis of alignment for surveying rural lands coincided with the deviation found for the urban plan.

The walls of Nicopolis belonged to the Augustan-era building program and present a uniform image in terms of building technique and materials. They were made with a poured concrete core and faced in large bricks of two sizes in successive courses. The walls are 2.50 meters thick throughout their length, apart from at points where corners and the gates were formed, whose thickness increased to 4.60 meters. They have a polygonal plan and enclose an area of 14,000 stremmata (1400 hectares). Their perimeter is estimated at 5000 meters.

The wall’s course may be followed with precision along its north and south sides. Remains of the south part of the west wall (i.e. south of the main West Gate) are preserved from the west side, while north of this gate no traces of it have been found. In all probability, this part was never completed, and for this reason later the intervals between the piers of the Aqueduct, which ran parallel to the imaginary course of the wall, were later sealed shut with makeshift walls. This intervention between the piers was apparently imposed by some emergency—probably, an enemy invasion—as showed also by the building material employed, which included spolia  (architectural members from various buildings, fragments of statues, even fragments of inscriptions). From the east wall of the Roman fortifications, only the north part of the East Gate, atop which the Early Christian wall was late built, survives. South of the East Gate the wall’s course is unclear.

Although they represented a major and expensive project, the rules of fortification architecture were not consistently applied to the Augustan walls (e.g., the towers were sparsely-set), which lends them more of a decorative than defensive character. Augustus’s reorganization of the army and the peace that prevailed throughout the vast empire after the battle of Actium—the vaunted Pax Romana—ensured Nicopolis’s protection and made a fortification wall superfluous. The building of the walls aimed at promoting Roman rule and inspiring the city’s residents, who had come from walled urban centers and smaller settlements from the greater area, with a sense of safety and social cohesion.

Throughout the entire length of the wall, five gates have been identified until now: the Northwest, the West, the Southwest, the Southeast, and the East. Two postern gates have been found, one in the west part of the north wall (no. 10)and a second one in the north part of the east wall (no.?), and there must have been gates at other points, e.g. the end of the cardo that passed in front of Basilica B (no. 58). With the exception of the monumental triple West Gate, the other gates were similarly configured: an arched opening framed by two semicircle towers.

The West Gate, whose (partially-buried) ruins may be made out today, was the city’s main—and most impressive—entrance. It was here that the road beginning from the port on the Ionian coast concluded, and it was here that the city’s main avenue (decumanus maximus) began, passing through the city along its transverse axis and bringing visitors to its center. The gate, which had three arched openings (a center one for wheeled vehicles and two side ones for pedestrian traffic) was flanked by two semicircle towers, of which that on the north remains preserved to an appreciable height. Based on excavations in the area, the pipe of the Aqueduct, which then continued to the south on piers, passed above this gate. The triple gate depicted on coin issues of the Hadrianic age has been identified as the West Gate. The West Cemetery extended out beyond this gate.

The Northwest Gate was the starting-point for an important paved N-S road which crossed the adjacent North Cemetery and then the Suburb (Proasteion) before in all likelihood ending up at the Victory Monument. The gate, which is 4.60 meters wide, is reinforced on either side by two semicircle towers. Small, offset postern gates ensured access to their interior. To the right and left of the gate, and with a length equal to that of its opening, two very sturdy piers, rectangular in plan and with limestone blocks at their base were formed. The blocks came from older buildings in the greater area. The North Cemetery extended outside this gate.

Another decumanus passed though the East Gate, which after traversing the East Cemetery came to an end on the coast of the Ambracian Gulf. In its initial form, the gate was reinforced by two semicircle towers, which following their destruction were replaced by new rectangular ones, constructed from reused material. Reconstruction was also carried out on the opening of the gate. The East Gate’s proximity to the Ambracian coast and the level ground outside it made it especially useful—as well as very vulnerable, as shown by its complete destruction and reconstruction.

The road that led to the main port at Vathy (Vathi) started from the Southeast Gate, at which one of the city’s cardines concluded (it partly coincided with the contemporary Via Egnatia from Ioannina-Preveza). This gate too was flanked by two semicircle towers. The better-preserved east tower preserves an offset arched postern that led to its interior. A built staircase in contact with its east wall secured access to the rampart-walk. Annexes north of the tower are interpreted as a guardhouse and quarters for the staff. Most of the tower is now destroyed. Inside both towers there were found many terracotta plaques that had been used in paving the floors in a herringbone pattern (opus spicatum). Excavation in the gate area has revealed part of the South Cemetery.

The construction features of the other gates are recognizable at the Southwest Gate, which is fragmentarily preserved. Of the west tower, part of the west wall, the genesis of the arch, and three steps from the brick staircase at its northwest corner survive. A postern gate led to its interior. The tower was later rebuilt of material in second use, and acquired a rectangular ground plan. Repairs and alterations were also found on the east tower. On the interior and parallel to the wall in the gate area, the piers of the Aqueduct can be made out.