Public Lecture by Professor Alexander Mazarakis Ainian, University of Thessaly
SYDNEY
Wednesday August 21, 2025
6.30pm
Vere Gordon Childe Centre Boardroom
Level 4, Madsen Building
The University of Sydney
Although close to Athens, Kythnos remains one of the lesser-known
islands of the Cyclades. Its capital, today called Vryokastro, has a rich
ancient history from the 12th C BC to the 7th C AD. Land and underwater
fieldwork have brought to light four sanctuaries, each dedicated to
different deities. One of these was unplundered, a unique finding that
greatly advances our knowledge about the use of ancient Greek temples
from the Archaic period to the Roman era. This paper presents this
exceptional discovery, as well as Vyrokastro’s other temples, its settlement
on the acropolis, the Hellenistic ‘prytaneion’, a proto-Byzantine basilica
church, and the city’s harbour installations, to celebrate what has been
called ‘the best Greek island you have never heard of’.
2025 AAIA GALE VISITING PROFESSOR
Professor Alexander Mazarakis Ainian, University of Thessaly
Alexander Mazarakis Ainian was born in Athens in 1959. He studied History of Art and Archaeology at the Free University of Brussels and completed his PhD at the University of London (UCL) with a scholarship from the “A. Onassis” Public Benefit Foundation. He initially worked as an archaeologist at the Greek Ministry of Culture. He taught for eight years at the Department of History of the Ionian University and since 1999 he has been Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Thessaly. He has also taught at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens; National Technical University of Athens; Paris I/Panthéon-Sorbonne; Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris); UCL-Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium); and Paris IV-Sorbonne. His field projects include Skala Oropos and Vari in Attica, Kythnos in the Cyclades, Soros in Magnesia, and Kefala on Skiathos. He has published numerous books and studies on Early Iron Age architecture in Greece, Homeric questions, and the results of his excavations. He was awarded the prestigious Chaire Internationale de Recherche Blaise Pascal in 2012 by the French state. In 2016 he was elected Corresponding Member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres in Paris, and in 2024 he received an honorary doctorate from Paris 1/Panthéon-Sorbonne.
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