Making our way from Syntagma down through the hubbub of Mitropoleos Street towards the Cathedral, we reach the tiny seventeenth-century chapel of the Divine Power (Ayia Dynamis), related to the Virgin as protector of women in childbirth. Dedicated to the Birth of the Virgin Mary, the chapel was built with a surrounding courtyard in Ottoman times and served at one point as an ammunition depot for both Greeks and Turks. Set back off the narrow pavement, crouched between three pillars of a modern ministry, the tiny aisleless church brings to mind a dolls’ house that has managed to survive against all the odds.
Dodging innumerable, parked cars and motorbikes, we step down through a tiny porch into a brightly-lit room, the peaceful intimacy and aroma of wax contrasting with the sounding of car horns and diesel emanating from nose-to-tail traffic outside. A paved floor displays a large double-headed eagle, symbol of the Byzantine emperors. Brasses gleam and metal-covered icons twinkle on a large carved iconostasis (icon screen) displaying icons of the Church Feasts. An old Pappas, bearded Orthodox priest, bustles about; hat perched high on his silver-haired bun, the folds of his black vestments billowing behind him, he appears kindly, but detached. Blackened wall paintings of saints, eaten away by time, the once vivid colours illuminated by flickering candlelight, don the walls. We can just make out St Philothei, martyred Athenian nun and founder of the monastery to St Andrew. A young worshipper wanders in, pausing to cross herself and kiss selected icons before lighting candles and passing back into the world outside. It is the Orthodox Holy Week and residents are preparing to celebrate the Resurrection, the supreme festival of the Eastern Church.
Walking on, the pungent smell of chargrilled lamb and peppers fills the air. ‘Kalos irthate!’ ‘Welcome back!’ calls out the waiter with a raffish moustache as we pass our favourite taverna. Seen just now and again between tall office blocks high up on our left, the Acropolis glows. We reach Mitropoleos Square and the seat of the Orthodox archbishop, the modern cathedral (Great Mitropolis), whose twin towers rear against a backdrop of modern Athens. The central point for the Greek Orthodox Church, the cathedral was founded in 1834 when Athens, with a population of about 20,000 people, became the capital of new Greece. Planned by the Bavarian architect, Ernst Ziller, the cornerstone was laid by King Otto and Queen Amalia in 1842 and took twenty years to build. With its mixture of neoclassical and Neo-Byzantine styles, the cathedral epitomises the post-Independence Byzantine Revival.
Dedicated to the Annunciation of the Virgin, this grand building was built from the marble of seventy-two demolished churches on the site of the convent of St Andrew. Originally intended to be near the university, the cathedral was finally built amongst the citizens of Athens in the centre of the old city where the paved square was created. The Athenians were filled with pride at the creation of their cathedral which contains the relics of St Philothei and Gregory V, Patriarch of Constantinople, hanged during the Ottoman Occupation and whose body was later recovered from the Bosphorus. The triple-arched portico, surmounted by a mosaic of the Annunciation, towers above the entrance. In the middle of the square, surrounded by cafeterias, stands a life-sized bronze statue of martyred St Constantine, the last Byzantine Emperor, alongside a statue of Archbishop Damaskinos, protector of Greek Jews during World War II.
In the corner of the square, in the shadow of the new cathedral, sits the tiny, dainty cross-in-square church of the Little Metropolis, once the cathedral of Athens. The little church was also known as Panayia Gorgoepikoos, Our Lady who Grants Requests Quickly, due to a miracle-working icon of the Mother of God. Traditionally founded by Empress Irene and built over the site of an old temple dedicated to an ancient goddess of childbirth, the church was part of a monastery that was destroyed during the War of Independence. During the Ottoman era this little cathedral was attached to the house of the archbishops whom the Crusaders had ousted from the Acropolis. Too small to serve as a cathedral, it was abandoned in 1827 and some years later it was used to house Athens’ first library.
A combination of the clarity of line of the ancients and oriental rhythm and grace, an elegant, slender Athenian dome rises on a high drum above a double light window. The lower walls, of a warm ochre colour, are made of smooth marble, whilst the upper walls are made up of ninety spolia, reused ancient and early Byzantine marble slabs, which run all round the church.
At the west entrance, the marble door frame is incised with Roman capitals and Christian crosses. Eastern elements abound: a relief of lions carved between the arms of a small Christian cross sits just above the door, above a relief of early Byzantine birds and griffins. Higher up on the cornice, a fourth century BC frieze depicts the Attic months, represented by pagan festivals and seasons with their zodiac symbols. A unique fragmented relief of the Panathenaic festival, the ship carrying Athena’s peplos, survives, partially obscured by the later addition of crosses. Built into this same facade is a carved Tree of Life, flanked on either side by an Egyptian-type double sphinx relief on a background of Oriental ornament. To our left on the north wall sits part of an ancient relief of a naked figure standing between two crosses. Round on the right, the south wall of the church, can be found a rare carved relic of the Athenian Frankish period – a Crusader coat of arms. Originally decorated throughout with marble and frescoes, one faded surviving fresco of the Virgin and Child remains in the apse and a thirteenth-century icon of Bishop Michael Choniates hangs in the entrance.
Nearby in Philothei Street sits the small church of St Andrew, on the ruins of a monastery and basilica dedicated to the Apostle Andrew. Appearing to Philothei in a dream, the apostle asked her to found the monastery and she dedicated this particular monastery in Athens to him. Martyred in 1589, Philothei’s monastery and church were demolished at the end of the nineteenth century to make room for new Archbishop’s offices. The faded, but still poignant, figure of St Philothei can be seen in fragments of wall-paintings removed from the demolished convent to the Byzantine Museum.
Ambling along Philothei and Evangelistrias Streets, we pass glass-fronted ecclesiastical shops filled with religious objects. Further inside can be seen a variety of ecclesiastical clothing, epitaphios shrouds and white baptismal outfits beside gold, silver and enamelled swinging censers, twelve bells on each censer representing each apostle. Gold-plated crowns, brass cauldrons and oil lamps sparkle. Incense burners, inlaid brass bowls with trays, candle-holders and gold and silver-plated votive plaques depicting images of a relevant body part or a longed-for baby, lie alongside wooden frames and altar chalices. DVDs of the Greek Orthodox Liturgy and chant are stacked alongside Holy Book covers and pocket prayer books.
Close by, half-way up the fashionable shopping street of Ermou, dwarfed by shops and the tall apartment blocks of the modern city, squats the small church of Kapnikarea. Part of the Turkish bazaar long ago, congested with traffic for decades, this now pedestrianized square is filled with wandering Athenians and salesmen. A trio of street musicians strum and sing old Greek melodies, whilst the air hums with the sounds of voices from pavement cafés packed with joyous Athenians with their paréa, or group, the core of Greek life.
Dedicated to the Presentation of the Virgin Mary to the Temple, the twelfth-century stone and brick Kapnikarea, probably named after the tax-collecting sponsor, consists of two churches and was built on the ruins of an ancient temple. Built in the traditional Greek cross-in-square plan with an octagonal dome, the Kapnikarea is typical of the mid-Byzantine period. The adjoining smaller domed chapel of St Barbara, an early Christian saint and martyr added during the Ottamon period, became a meeting place for Greeks. Having escaped demolition in the 1830s amidst unrealised plans to create avenues up to the new palace, the Kapnikarea was handed over to the University of Athens and restored.
Approaching the east façade of the church from Ermou, three domed apses with gable roofs ‘reach up’ towards the dome. Round to the west side, blank arcades unfold along the now closed façade of the outer vestibule, ending in a graceful two-columned side-portico, topped with a modern mosaic of Virgin and Child. The octagonal dome, each section adorned with arched single-light windows surrounded by dog-tooth ornament, rises above the arches and clustered roofs below, creating a rhythmical effect. This rhythmic flow of Byzantine architecture, a harmonious merging of Hellenic grace and oriental spirituality, is described by Chatzidakis in his fascinating book, Byzantine Athens (1961). The interior of the Kapnikarea is richly decorated with Neo-Byzantine frescoes by the greatest icon-painter of modern Greece, Fotias Kontoglu.
Further down off Evripidou in the poorer quarter of Athens lies the tiny single-nave basilica of St John of the Column (Ayios Ioannis stin Kolona). Erected on the site of a sanctuary to the ancient doctor, Toxaris, during the Byzantine period, the chapel takes its name from the Corinthian column protruding through its low roof. Within the sanctuary can be seen the lower part of the marble column to which were attached shreds of garments or multi-coloured threads representing the fevers of those seeking cures. Tradition states that John the Baptist was credited as a healer of shivering fits and fevers. The worshipper believed he tied his illness to the marble, burying the fevers beneath the column. The practice still continues: ex-votos hang from the church’s walls and threads are tied round the column. On 29th August, the feast day of St John the Baptist, the little chapel and the courtyard are filled with worshippers, spilling out with expectation and hope into the surrounding neighbourhood.