Category:Las Incantadas

English: Las Incantadas is the judeo-spanish name given to a second-century AD Roman portico that once adorned the city of Thessalonica. Although its original purpose remains unclear, it is known that it consisted of an unknown number of columns, each with a pillar on top of it. Each pillar was bilateral, with two reliefs on each side depicting Greek mythological figures. By the medieval period, only five of the columns and four of the pillars were still standing; the surviving reliefs are Nike-Maenad (pillar 1), Aura-Dionysus (pillar 2), Dioscurus-Ariadne (pillar 3) and Ganymede-Leda (pillar 4). The portico owed its name to the Thessalonican urban legend that the figures on it were once living breathing people who were petrified with magic. In 1864, French paleologist Emmanuel Miller took permission from the Ottoman authorities to remove the entire colonnade and transport it in France to the public outcry of the Thessalonicans. In the end the portico was dismantled and destroyed, though Miller did take the four pillars, which are now exhibited in the Louvre. In 1997 a fragment of the fifth pillar was found in the city.