Athens Byzantine Athens

Hours vary. The best time to visit is 9-11am. Modest dress required.

Athens teems with places of worship. Sanctuaries pepper tiny streets, squeeze between modern buildings, and hide under porticos, their modest facades almost overwhelmed by modern architecture. Inside their doors, ornate, icon-filled rooms unfold, dimly lit and smelling of incense. If no service is in session (services usually Su morning and 6pm every evening), a recording of chanting may be playing.

Many historians see Constantine’s establishment of a Christian empire in 324 BC as a death-knell for Classical culture. But the 11th- and 12th-century golden age of Byzantine art has left behind its own share of masterpieces—devotional mosaics, delicate icons, and cross-shaped domed buildings—many of which can be found on the streets of Athens. Kapnikaria Church, just below ground-level on Ermou and Kalamiotou, has typical Byzantine architecture; the frescoes inside are by a 20th-century painter, Photis Koruglou. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, this church was built above the ruins of a temple to a female goddess, probably Athena or Demeter. ( ☎21032 24 462. Open M and W 8am-2pm , Tu and Th-F 8am-12:30pm and 5-7pm, Su 8-11:30am.) Down Mitropoleos from Syndagma, where the street intersects with Evangelistras and Pandrossou, are Agios Eleftherios and the Mitropoli Cathedral, still under construction after a recent earthquake. A frieze with the Attic calendar of feast days adorns the front facade. Agia Apostoli, which stands at the eastern edge of the Agora on Dioskouron and Polingnotou, dates from the early 11th century, making it one of Athens’s oldest churches. White-walled Metamorphosis, on Theorias and Klepsidras, off Pritanou in Plaka, also was built in the 11th century, and was restored in 1956. Eleventh-century Russian Orthodox Agia Triada, a few blocks from Pl. Syndagma at Filellinon 21, is filled with silver angel icons. Farther on Filellinon is the Sotira Lykodimou, the largest medieval building in Athens, dating from 1031. Built as part of a Roman Catholic monastery, it is now a Russian Orthodox church. In Ambelokipi, north of Kolonaki next to Areos Park, Byzantine religiosity meets modern commercial development rather jarringly. Tiny Panagitsa (little Virgin) sits literally in the middle of Alexandros Hotel’s driveway on T. Vassou, and 11th-century Agioi Pantes sleeps humbly at the back entrance of the Panathenaic stadium on A. Tsochas. The Chapel of Saint George, another small but elaborate structure, looms over Athens from the peak of Mt. Lycavittos, on top of a ruined temple to Zeus.