The church of Panagia Acheiropoietos
The Church of Panagia
Acheiropoietos is located in the central part of
the walled city of Thessalonica,
a short distance to the north of Egnatia
Street. It is mentioned in sources as the large church
of the Virgin Mary; the name Acheiropoietos
is first attested in a document from
1320, doubtless in connection with a devotional icon of the Virgin Mary at
prayer, believed to have been created without human hand, which was kept in the
church. It appears that in Byzantine times the Virgin Mary was venerated
together with the city's patron saint, Agios Demetrius, and that on the latter’s
feast day the litany entered the Church of the Virgin Mary as its principal
station, before proceeding to the Church
of Agios Demetrius. The
church was built after 450, in the third quarter of the 5th century. In 1430,
immediately after the fall of Thessalonica to the Ottomans, Acheiropoietos
was the first church to
be converted into a mosque, which conquest is recorded in a Turkish inscription
on the eighth column in the north colonnade , counting from the east.
From an
architectural point of view, Acheiropoietos
is a three-nave timber roofed
basilica with galleries . The three naves in the main church are
separated by colonnades, while a tribelon opening leads from the narthex
to the nave. The north nave ends to the east in the Middle Byzantine Chapel
of Agia Irini. To the east, the central nave ends in a semicircular conch
with a synthronon and episcopal throne. The triple-light window
with pillars replaced the original five-light window with mullions .
The marble altar screen is modern; traces on the floor reveal that the
original one ended at the third column from the east. To the west is the narthex,
with visible traces of an exonarthex , which perhaps correspond to the
east portico of the atrium that would have been extended to the west. On
the south side of the building there is a monumental propylon , probably
because the church was connected to the city’s main thoroughfare, known as the Leophoros
or Avenue. An outbuilding next to the propylon is believed to have been
the baptistry .
The three successive floors in the north nave of the basilica belong to
an earlier Roman bath.
Over
the course of its history the monument has undergone a series of alterations, distorting
its original form to some degree. The
most serious of these include destruction of the original roof, degradation of
the upper part of the central nave (leading to the loss of the skylight), and
demolition of the west gallery and exonarthex.
Thanks to the robustness and
external grandeur of the basilica, the harmony and balance of its
internal layout, the high artistic merit of its mosaic and sculpture decoration
and its marble floor, the church is considered one of the most important
examples of its kind in the whole of Greece.
The sculpture decoration forms a unified whole designed and executed for this
particular basilica. Of particular importance are the mid-5th
century Theodosian capitals , which share features with those from Constantinople, and the Thessalian marble columns in the
tribelon.
The high quality mosaics in
the colonnade intrados on the ground floor and south gallery , the
narthex and the window of the west wall should be assigned to the same
period in; they depict crosses, water vessels, birds, fruit, fish and other
themes with religious symbolism, in symmetrical arrangement. The sponsor of the
mosaics is referred to as Andrew, on the intrados of the central and south arc
of the tribelon. He has been identified as the priest who took part in the
Council of Chalcedon (451) as representative of the Archbishop of Thessalonica,
which fits in with the dating of the mosaics to the second half of the 5th
century.
All that survives from the
Byzantine period are a few poorly preserved murals in the south nave, on the
wall above the south colonnade. The eighteen figures alternately shown
in profile and full face form part of a depiction of the Forty Martyrs of
Sebaste, which dates to the early decades of the 13th century.
The church has undergone repeated
renovation work since the early 20th century, including drastic alterations to
the supporting structure and extensive rebuilding of the damaged or dilapidated
sections. Recently completed large-scale
maintenance and restoration projects were aimed at repairing the damage caused
to the monument by the 1978 earthquake, and guaranteeing the monument’s overall
structural stability.
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