Wandering through Byzantine Athens / New York City Tales

For years I’ve admired the exquisite little Byzantine era churches in the midst of Athens’ crowded streets or squares, completely opposite in character from the grand Gothic cathedrals of western Europe.

Although most tourists are drawn by Athens’ ancient legacy, these historical and architectural jewels and remnants of Byzantine civilization help give the city another flavor.

When you walk down Ermou, the pedestrian and main shopping street that starts at Syntagma Square and runs down to Monastiraki, you can’t help but run smack into an impressive Byzantine era church in the middle of the street. You may have even sat down to rest your tired feet on the low ledge around the church. Built in the 11th century on an earlier temple site to the goddess Athena or Demeter, the Panagia Kapnikarea was part of a middle Byzantine flurry of church and monastery building in and around Athens. You can see the typical eight sided dome, the elaborate brickwork, arched windows and what was called “cross in square” pattern. Take a look at the background building — how will future architects and archaeologists describe this 20th century monstrosity with its own scattered pattern of air conditioner units?

We have to thank of all people, then-King Otto’s father Ludwig, for saving the church from the zeal of 1830’s foreign urban planners of the early Greek state. Claiming it got in the way of horses and carriages moving on the street, they were ready to demolish the Kapnikarea!

The area around it was in unusual sleep mode last week when we were walking around the city on a day of unmerciful sun and I had the ledge practically to myself. (Competing in some kind of treasure hunts, Athens seemed full of young Americans dressed in either dazzling orange or hot pink t-shirts, moving as fast as possible in the heat, wiping their faces from the sweat.)

Inside, the beautifully decorated walls and columns are works of the artist Fotis Kontoglou and his team of agiographoi, hagiographers or icon painters, from the 1940’s.

Outside the church it’s a popular place for street musicians and in this case from last winter, a rather macabre dance of living statues.

The church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary (Panagia) but how did it get the name of Kapnikarea? In Greek the word for smoke is kapnos and perhaps relates to the profession of the founder of the church, Kapnikarios who collected the Byzantine kapnikos tax, that was levied against households where you could see smoke rising from the chimney. Or it might be related to kamoucharea referring to a workshop nearby that produced silk fabrics with designs of branches and flowers.

If it’s afternoon or evening, you’ll probably hear strains of bouzouki and baglama, and see the musicians sitting outside at the nearby Kapnikarea cafe.

Keep following Ermou to Monastiraki Square and you come to the Pantanassa church (meaning “queen over all”). The original church is probably a century older than Kapnikarea as instead of a dome, it is a barrel-vaulted basilica, characteristic of the transition from late antiquity to the cross-in-square church of the byzantine and medieval world. The church is lower than the ground level, showing how the city was then.

Here you can see the bell tower, added some centuries later as well as the whole sweep of the square, one of the rare places you can see three cultures, the ancient, the Ottoman and the Byzantine.

Initially the church was called Mega Monastiri (Large Monastery), an annex of the 11th century monastery of Kesariani on the slopes of Mt. Hymettus. (If you’re really into 11th century monasteries, then you should visit the one at Dafni, outside Athens, a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its stunning mosaics.)

The nuns at the Mega Monastiri sold woven fabrics at stalls outside the convent courtyard, where other vendors also set up shops. When the monastery fell into decline and the monastic cells were destroyed, only the little church remained. It took the name Monastiraki (little convent) with the same name for the surrounding area. Even today Monastiraki is known for its small shops and flea market (see blog Athens City Walks: Monastiraki and Psyrrhi)

The icons and paintings, as in Kapnikarea, are also by Fotis Kontoglou and his team. The small church inside nearly overwhelms you with the smell of the incense, hypnotic colors and textures. The caretaker, stepping outside to smoke, keeps looking back to make sure you obey the signs saying “no photos.” (It’s the only church I’ve seen not allowing photos.)

Another church of the double barreled style I saw in the Plaka area but with no information and a sign so covered in graffiti, I couldn’t tell the name!

This year on April 6-7, the annual Athens Open House (which showcases various architectural styles) featured a walking tour of “Byzantine Athens.” Judging by the line of people waiting outside the Little Mitropolis church, the tour was popular.

Although the square is dedicated to the large Mitropolis church which is the city cathedral, the “little Mitropolis” next to it is much more interesting in the way it was built.

Constructed on the top of an ancient temple to the goddess Eileithyia, protector of pregnant women and childbirth, it is the only Byzantine church made entirely of marble and is largely unchanged from its construction. Besides “little Mitropolis,” it has two other official names. One, “Gorgopeikos” refers to the Panagia that grants requests quickly (!) and the name Agios Eleftherios keeps the focus of the ancient temple, as this refers to the protector of pregnant women. (The connection between pregnancy and the word “eleftheria” meaning “freedom” is one I have always found interesting –and a little puzzling — for the common wish you say to pregnant women is kali eleftheria or “good freedom.”)

The church almost looks like a puzzle itself with all sorts of reused marble architectural parts from non-Christian temples of antiquity. For this reason, it’s hard to know exactly when it was constructed. Scholars have argued from anywhere from the 8th to 15th century.

Assembling a church from older pagan temples from the area made sense. Not only was it cheaper and more convenient, but it also removed the old pagan religious artifacts of Greek and Roman gods and other images from public record. “Spolia” is the name for patching together previously used building material, and this was common in the ancient world. The process of “baptizing” pagan objects was simple: just carve a cross on it. So, the gods, animals, plants, trees of oriental origin, sphinxes, geometric designs, even athletic games of ancient Greek civilization, all these were “exorcised” by adding a cross.

After independence, the church was abandoned for a while, then used as a city public library (!) until it was rededicated as a church in 1863.

The tour took us past some non byzantine landmarks in the Plaka such as the oldest elementary school (still in use) from the 1870’s that was known for its interactive teaching, where many statesman of the day studied. We also stopped at one of the few Ottoman landmarks left, the Benizelous mansion. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to check it out last week as the door was inexplicably closed.

The house dates back to the 16th and 17th centuries, and was once the home to Athens’ martyr patron saint “Agia (Saint) Filothei” . You can see inside the remains of a Roman wall, a wine press and olive press at the back and fountain. (At some point I will find the door open again….)

That Ottoman monuments are even rarer than Byzantine is understandable. When Greece got its independence after the 1821 war, the country did its best to get rid of memories of the hated Ottoman occupation.  A few former mosques, such as the Tzisdarakis Mosque (or once known as the Mosque of the Lower Fountain) from the 18th century still stands in Monastiraki Square. Now it houses a ceramics collection , part of the Museum of Greek Folk Art. Against the wall it’s thick with the usual tourist hats, T-shirts, dresses, key chains, magnets and sandals.

The Byzantine and Ottoman years tend to be skipped over when going through Greece’s history, in favor of the ancient and the modern. You can really note this emphasis in the 2004 Athens Olympics in the opening ceremony where history begins with the Minoans, moves through other periods of ancient history, and pretty much jumps to the 1821 Revolution and the modern era.

With some foot power, if you keep walking way up in the Plaka, next to the tree shaded slopes under the Acropolis, you’ll find the tiny Church of the Metamorphosis, another single aisle 11th or 12th century in cross-in-square, brickwork with an Athenian dome above it.

Near the church, two tourists, evidently lost, stopped to ask a street artist who was painting the church, “which is the right way to the Acropolis from here?” Startled, he put down his brush, pointed ahead and in a wonderfully succint manner, said, “Left. Straight. Finish. Acropolis.”

On the way up, you pass 11th century Agios Nikolaos Raganas, a larger church. We had hoped to go inside but as we rounded the corner to see the church, we heard a teacher telling his students “This is usually open but today is closed for some reason.” (Some small churches open only on their saints’ days but this was not the case.)  He was telling his students about the bell that’s carefully guarded inside the church. Apparently, during the 400 year Ottoman occupation it was forbidden to ring church bells and they were supposed to be destroyed. The story has it that the priests had hidden the bell and when Otto was brought to Athens to be crowned king, this was the only church that could ring a bell for his arrival. It was also the first bell to chime at the end of the German occupation. We had to content ourselves with looking around the side to the patio. Not quite the same.

Sometimes the church grounds are truly beautiful, as this display of bougainvillea next to the Transfiguration on Kydathinaion Street, the main pedestrian street as you enter the Plaka.

Always one of my favorite streets, I’ve walked on Kydathinaion hundreds of times, but I never really noticed this church before that has added on quite a bit over the years and after independence, it was used as a Russian church for a while. This is the old 11th century part.

Surely the most unusual church location is sandwiched in here between two giant concrete pillars near Syntagma next to the entrance of the Electra Mitropoleos Hotel, which for years belonged to a government Ministry.  When it was built in the 1950’s, they took care to preserve the little 16th century narrow aisle church. It’s another church with the name referring to protection of pregnant women, Agia Dynami (Holy Strength) That makes more sense than Saint .Freedom! Inside, some women came and went, lighting a candle, kissing the icon, saying a quick prayer.

And this mysterious one with no name, across from a guitarist and bongo player in the back of Hadrian’s Library near Monastiraki Square, hides its story behind this barrier.

Agios Apostoli in the Ancient Agora

So far, all of the Byzantine churches have been part of the city streets and squares, but now we’re on our way to the Ancient Agora.  The orange shirted and pink shirted treasure hunters are downing large glasses of beer in a taverna along the way, with plates piled high with kebabs and potatoes. We enter the pastoral world of the Agora with its olive trees, pines and cypresses. This was the place where ancient Athenian males met, walked around, talked, debated, learned the current news, did some shopping, even worshipped.

We take the (mostly unshaded) Panathanaic Way, the ancient street that went from the Kerameikos (see blog Sacred Stones: Acropolis, Kerameikos and 1st Cemetery of Athens) to the Acropolis, where in the Panathenaic Festival, a solemn procession marched to the Acropolis. Here, winners of the athletic events races were awarded with giant amphorae of olive oil.  Near the back of the Agora, in a pleasant grove of olive trees sits the Byzantine church of Agioi Apostoli, Holy Apostles, the only Byzantine monument left in the Agora.

Built around 1000 A.D. the church has Kufic letters (7th century script from Iraq) that a number of churches used to have.

In the 2nd century AD the main marketplace where the Athenians did business was the Stoa Attalos, a present from the King of Pergamon and renovated by the American Archaeological School in the 1950’s. There was a lovely view of the garden through one of the arches.

The museum is small but fascinating for what it shows on the daily life and funerary practices of Athens’ citizens. Take a look at these shoes made of clay, from a woman cremated in 900 BC.

This display case of ostrakia, shards of ostracism, the practice Athenians did for ostracising or banishing citizens (also in museum of kerameikos) was surprising in that one of the shards bore the name of Themistocles. Could this be the Themistocles who saved Athens from the Persian threat and did so much for Athens? A woman standing next to me was particularly incensed and nearly took it personally, as if this had just happened. “How ungrateful they were!” she shouted to me.

Through various invasions and destruction, the Ancient Agora continued to be used in the early years of the Byzantine era, though as Athens gradually lost its importance, so did the Agora. Finally, at the end of the 6th century, it was left abandoned for 300 years under a coating of mud.

Coincidentally, the 6th century AD during the reign of Justinian, were golden years of growth for the empire. In a move to consolidate the rise of Christianity, he closed the philosophical schools: Plato’s Academy, and Aristotle’s Lyceum, that were still operating centuries after the philosophers’ deaths. This move made Athens even more of a Byzantine backwater.

Plato’s Academy

You can visit the sacred grove where Plato had the Academy, the first University of the western world from 337 BC. We walked around it recently, the only time ever. It’s what was then outside the city walls along the Iera Odos (Sacred Way), which still bears this name from antiquity. It’s the road that went from Athens to Elefsina, site of the Elefsis mysteries. But don’t look for evidence of anything very sacred, it’s a road of abandoned factories and warehouses that have been converted to enormous nightclubs.

At the site for Plato’s Academy, there’s nothing really to see, remains of a “Sacred Residence ” where kids are playing around, families are picnicking and stalls set up to sell homemade food. We finally found a marker telling about Plato and his Academy, referring to the name of the area.

Although the site is pretty neglected, there is a charming digital and interactive museum nearby that’s all about Plato’s life and philosophy. After one of the “test yourselfs” where you complete syllogisms and logic, if you get them all right (yes we did!) Plato comes on the screen and tells you, yes there’s a place for you in his Academy! Although after his death the Academy declined in importance, it still continued operating. And of course his most famous pupil, Aristotle, started his own school, which we’ll see in a moment, having established that he was a realist, grounded in science, compared to Plato and his idealism, as shown in Rafael’s famous painting, where Plato is pointing up to the heavens, Aristotle down to earth.

It seems the early Christians had a love-hate relationship with the ancient philosophers — they admired them (and in some cases managed to synthesize mystically oriented neo Platonic philosophy with Christian theology) but at the same time they were seen as a heathen threat to the new religion. For that reason, the schools were finally banned in 529 AD by the emperor Justinian and paganism was outlawed. When a philosopher was condemned as a heretic a few centuries after, he was accused of “resorting to Hellenic ideas and belief in Plato’s doctrines rather than simply reading his works as literature” (!!) (Avriel Cameron, Byzantine Matters). At this time “Hellenic” was a rather negative term referring to pagan beliefs; it was only centuries later that it began to be used to describe the Greeks.

So, we’re on our way to the Byzantine Museum to check out, oh just 18 centuries or so of history.

Out the entrance of the Agora, we can see our orange and pink shirted treasure hunters are still eating and drinking. Looks like they’re just about ready to sing….

Theocharakis Museum

Actually it’s the “international day of museums.” Turning onto Vassilisis Sofias Avenue from Syntagma Square, we pass the Parliament building and some beautiful neo-classical embassies Along the way we stop at a couple of exhibitions of 20th (and 21st) century artists, first at the Theocharakis Museum to see an exhibit on the surrealist/hyperrealist poet and painter Nikos Engonopoulos, who counted his main influences Byzantine art and Greek mythology. Below is a painting from his “Orpheus” series from the 1930’s and his characteristic primary colors and shapes that you can see in a poster he designed for TWA in the 50’s.

Since we’ve stepped into modern times, we also make a stop at the Benaki Museum where there’s an exhibit on British artist John Craxton, who, like many modern philhellenes, came to Greece for a visit and stayed, discovering his soul here. Besides his light filled canvases, he also sketched and painted people he would meet at the kafeneio as well as noted writers and artists. Here’s one of his sketches: “The Musician.”

Byzantine Museum and Aristotle’s Lyceum

Now we’re ready to go back in time to see the museum collection of 25,000 treasures. It’s in the former Villa IIissia built for the Doukissa tis Plakentias, the Duchess of Plaisance, a French-American of the mid 19th century, who settled in Greece. She gave the mansion the name “Villa Ilissia” because at that time it was on the banks of the River Ilissos, which has since dried up. The lovely courtyard is usually used as a venue for the Athens outdoor cinema festival.

“Byzantine” was actually the name given in the 16^th century to describe the Roman empire from the 4^th century on when Constantine legalized Christianity in 313 and moved the capital in 330 AD to what had been Byzantium in the ancient world. The end of the era was 1453 when the weakened empire fell to the Ottomans, May 29 to be exact, and on a Tuesday. Greeks still mourn this day and consider Tuesday the 13th (not Friday) to be unlucky.

We tend to think of the Byzantine era as unchanging, inflexible and homogenous, but at the beginning at least it was multinational and multireligious.  The citizens of “New Rome,” Christians as well as a sizeable Jewish population, felt themselves to be “Romans” and part of the Roman empire. (In Greece the “Romaniote” Jews trace their ancestry back to the Roman and Byzantine times, as opposed to the Sephardic Jews who immigrated to Greece from Spain and Portugal the end of the 15^th century). Latin gradually gave way to Greek as the dominant language.

In the museum, a series of maps show you just how much the empire shrank by 1340; it had become mainly just Greece, one of the reasons the empire is identified with Greekness and Greece and Christianity.  In fact, the full name of the museum is the “Byzantine and Christian Museum.”

Christian art, which was put to work to propagate the new faith, in fact borrowed much from ancient Greece. For example, Orpheus is often identified with Christ and the ancient “calf bearer” has become the “good shepherd.”

I think what visitors always find most interesting are the everyday objects people used at that time, in these 5th and 6th century clay and glass vessels and vials of holy water and blessed earth from shrines.

From the mid 5th to 7th century Christianity converted many ancient Temples. As we’ve seen with the “little Micropolis,” a cross was added between these two ancient statues.

After Justinian’s rule, the empire started to decline for a while, due to various factors: a general feeling of being worn out, Arab conquests, and arguments between those who wanted the use of icons and those against it. In 843, the iconophiles won out and icon painting flourished.

Two sided icons were a popular style for a while, as in this 3-D icon of St. George, with other saints on the back.

The room of this Byzantine church is a copy of a church that once stood on the banks of the Evritaina River and was discovered halfway submerged when a dam was constructed in 1960. Archeologists removed the wall frescoes before the water level reached the church, and each piece was placed back in its spot.

Although the years of the Byzantine empire didn’t fit in so much with the narrative of the new modern state, by the end of the 19th century increasing nationalism created a longing for Constantinople, known as the Megali Idea, or Grand Idea. This culminated in the 1922 Asia Minor catastrophe in Smyrna. More in a later blog on this 100 year anniversary.

After traipsing around in 18 centuries, it’s good to take a deep breath and have a freddo in the Cafe. Sometimes there are interesting sculpture exhibits outside, as this one several years ago. Check out the “woman” in blue on the bench.

The cafe overlooks the site of Aristotle’s Lyceum, which amazingly was buried until 1996 when ground was broken to build a new modern art branch of the Goulandris Museum and opened to the public in 2014. (The branch was moved to another site nearby after the discovery.)

Like Plato’s academy, this was a suburb of Athens and an area worshipped since ancient times. As with the academy, the curriculum promoted the idea of a sound body and sound mind. An integral part of the early gymnasium was the palestra, where the students did wrestling and washed the oil and dust from their bodies. Later, pipes were installed under the floor and heated to make a “steam room”  followed by a dip into the cold water of the cistern.  A note at the site tells us says that public baths were considered too much “sensuous pleasure” and were more popular later in Hellenistic and Roman times.

To  be honest, although it’s a peaceful site between two very busy downtown streets, you don’t see very much. As it’s expressed on Matt Barrett’s Athens guide, it’s a site that “only an archaeologist could love.”  (But it is certainly better than Plato’s Academy.) You have to use your imagination. As you walk around to see the various ruins, you wander the same paths that Aristotle walked with this students, pointing out plants and trees from the natural world as they discussed philosophy and mathematics. It was a “peripatetic school,” the word from Greek peripato meaning “walk” or “stroll.”  Kinetic learners, this is the place for you! No sitting at a desk with a sometimes boring teacher in front of you; here you learned as you walked in the outdoors. After the 1996 discovery, vegetation that had been part of the Lyceum in the ancient world was replanted: pines and cypresses, lavender, laurel, acanthus, rosemary, thyme and  pomegranate trees (apparently there was a problem with visitors taking the pomegranates).

Would you prefer a morning or evening stroll? The morning walk was for advanced students and more difficult concepts, while the evening stroll was for “general lovers of knowledge.” 

The lyceum also contained a library. The historian Strabo wrote that it was the most important in the ancient world and was a model for the famous library in Alexandria. 

The 12 years that Aristotle had the Lyceum were productive ones for him; here he wrote Politics and a number of other works. Thanks to translations by Arab philosophers, Aristotle’s ideas spread during Byzantine and medieval times.

So, we have walked with the ancients, admired art and architecture of the Byzantine world, touched on a couple of modern artists and stepped into Athens’ rich historical past.

And now if I can be permitted, a slight digression to another city I love, New York City, as I plug my recently published fictionalized memoir “Step Lively: New York City Tales of Love and Change.”  Here it is!  (Available on Amazon, paperback and kindle)

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.