The floor of the apse
The floor of the apse, with the exception of its north section which was paved in marbles slabs, carried a mosaic consisting of two panels. The south panel was decorated with a black and white mosaic with a checkerboard pattern, while a composition of squares with inscribed vertical squares unfolded in the north panel. The whole was surrounded by frames decorated with winding tendrils of ivy leaves, a meander of hooked crosses, and interposed squares.
The floor of the Basilica vestibule
The Basilica vestibule had a mosaic floor. The part which was excavated was divided into two panels, as appears in the photographs and drawings in the Ephorate’s archive. In the west panel, as may be concluded from the very few surviving remains revealed in 1971, there was a composition of squares which for the most part contained circles and squares with concaves sides.
The composition in the east panel was a meander of hooked crosses with large and small interposed squares. The bands of the hooked crosses were adorned with a chain guilloche, the smaller squares with four parallelepepids, while the larger squares contained circles with a decorated circumference and central motif. Although different types of meander frequently appeared in Greek mosaics, this particular composition is not known from any other example of such an early date.
The mosaic frame surrounding the panels presents disparities which cannot be interpreted, since the mosaic has not been fully revealed. The motif of chained interlocking circles which was used here appears in three different forms in parts of the same frame. In one part of the mosaic which survives on the north side, the circumferences of the circles were decorated with two different motifs, while in another, which was revealed on the south side, the “rainbow style” was employed for the first and only time in the mosaics of the Galerian Complex. This motif, which is encountered in Thessaloniki in only one pre-Galerian mosaic, is observed in a series of mosaics in the city dating after the mid-4th century AD.
