St. Nicholas’s design taps into archetypes that have embodied human longing since the first stone was set upon stone. A primary influence was the archetype of the great mother, immortalized at the Hagia Sophia in the Virgin and Child Enthroned mosaic. Calatrava painted that image of the Blessed Mother, her son propped on her sturdy knees, followed by an increasingly reductive series of watercolors that yielded the final form of St. Nicholas’s dome. Even older is humanity’s relationship to Mother Earth, praised by the Greek poet Homer as “Mother of all, eldest of all beings.” At St. Nicholas, the image of both woman and earth is conjured by the circle inset into the paved forecourt at the entrance, which delineates a subtly marked ceremonial area. The same diameter as the church’s interior space, the circle metaphorically brings the sanctuary outdoors while alluding to cosmological dimensions.

Ancients conceived their temples in relationship to the landscape, aligning them with topographical features, such as mountains, that they believed were endowed with supernatural power. Elevated, illuminated, and the only circular structure at the World Trade Center, St. Nicholas invokes the cosmic center, the primeval point at which heaven and earth connect, which all holy places, whether Mayan temples or Gothic cathedrals, invoke. With its monolithic profile, etched with grooves of the sort that are carved in glacial landforms, the church itself can be read as a sacred mountain. Cut into this mountain is a low, curved entrance, the portal of the hermit’s holy cave. The stone veneer that covers the four corner towers is striated. These striations, like rock strata, mark linear time, while the sheltering dome speaks of time outside of time. The church overlooks the memorial pools, themselves inverted iterations of the holy mountain.

An icon of St. Dionysios of Zakynthos, printed on paper, was one of a handful of items recovered from the original St. Nicholas after September 11. Miraculously, the print survived intact, although its silver cover had melted away. The Greek saint is honored for forgiving his brother’s murderer.

Archbishop Demetrios, Primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of America, leads 540 parishes, 800 priests, and approximately one and a half million Greek Orthodox Christians in the United States. His commitment to religious freedom for all guided St. Nicholas’s rebuilding.

In addition to these cosmic allusions, which visitors will intuitively sense, the church is small, scaled to human beings, which gives it an inviting presence. Both beacon and blessing, it anchors the World Trade Center, poetically transmuting its sad past into future hope. Rising amid a vast commercial enterprise, St. Nicholas illuminates eternal, sometimes dissonant truths—us versus them, light versus darkness, wholeness versus brokenness—with forceful simplicity.