Ypochalkis

The ruins of Ancient Chalkis, also known as Ypochalkis, occupy the low coastal hill of Agia Triada, east of Kato Vasiliki in Aetolia. The city took its name from the imposing mountain to its west, called Chalkis in antiquity and Varasova today, and it was one of the five Aetolian cities listed by Homer in the Iliad. The site shows habitation from the end of the fourth millennium BC, with a notable Archaic settlement and a fortified acropolis in the Classical Period. A Greek-Danish team excavated the hill between 1995 and 2001, revealing a three-aisled Early Byzantine basilica (28 by 18.7 metres) built from an older temple's stone. The fortifications comprise three wall lines: the original Classical circuit, later Byzantine rebuilds, and 15th-century Venetian reinforcements. A competing site, the 4th-century BC Castle of Pangali or Ovryokastro, lies 1.5 kilometres west with pseudo-isodomic walls and five square towers, but the Ephorate of Antiquities favours Agia Triada as the city proper, with Pangali perhaps its outlying citadel. A possible ancient port survives lower on the western slope.