Ancient Pella, as revealed by the excavations, is built with rectangular building blocks, 47 m wide. The length of the building blocks varies, but the most common is 125 m. In each building block there were two or more houses. The largest of those located in the central archaeological site of ancient Pella, which can be visited, have an area of 2500-3000 sq.m. and the smallest 200-500 sq.m. Most have a central courtyard, surrounded by a Doric or Ionic colonnade. A few belong to the type with pastada, i.e. a wide portico on the north side. The rooms are located at the back of the galleries, often on the second floor.
Social and religious needs were served in the areas of banquets and domestic sanctuaries.
The banquet rooms of the wealthiest houses, usually located in their northern part, and their vestibules were decorated with mosaic floors with a great thematic variety and technical perfection, which prove the existence of organized mosaic workshops in Pella. The mosaic floors of Pella, known worldwide, make it a place with the most and most brilliant examples of this art, which, with the use of natural mosaics, is inspired by works of great painting.
The most luxurious houses of Pella are located in the central archaeological site. The largest of them has two peristyle courtyards with a Doric peristyle in the south and an Ionic one in the north. Around the Doric peristyle were the banquet halls that had mosaic floors with themes of the god Dionysus on a panther, a lion hunting, a griffin attacking a deer, a pair of centaurs (exhibited in the museum of Pella), while the floors of the vestibules had geometric designs. In another house, in the same area of the archaeological site, the banquet rooms have mosaic floors with themes of deer hunting, abduction of Helen by Theseus, Amazon battle (they are in place in the archaeological site).
On a low platform on the sides of the rooms above, the banquet beds were placed.
Analogous to the brilliant decoration of the floors was also the color decoration of the walls of the wealthiest houses, such as the decoration in the 1st Pompeian style of a wall, which was restored to a height of 5 m and is exhibited in the museum of Pella.
Editor: Fotini Anastasopoulou