Die Basilika am Kalekapı in Herakleia Perinthos

During the many years of excavations in Marmara Ereğlisi, an architectural ensemble of the 5th century was uncovered with the basilica at Kalekapı and a section of the immediately adjacent city wall. It was built at a time when ancient Herakleia Perinthos was the capital of the late antique province of Europe and connected to long-distance trade routes via the Sea of Marmara and the Via Egnatia. The proximity to Constantinople is noticeable in all the architectural details, which are treated in detail in this report, along with questions of metrology and construction techniques, in their unusually richly preserved materiality. The interior walls were covered with marble, stucco and mosaic, and the side aisles had painted ceilings. However, the mosaic floors, which have survived extensively in the side aisles and atrium halls, deserve special attention.
With the destruction of the basilica, a phase of after-use began, during which a chapel with an opus sectile floor was built in the atrium. A cemetery extended over the area. Skeletons of about 150 individuals were recovered from about 70 graves and anthropologically examined. Pottery and small finds are presented here for the first time for a Byzantine settlement in the Turkish part of Thrace in a representative selection. Their evaluation revealed that the first burials took place in the late 6th or early 7th century and that the site was abandoned in the course of the 13th century.