Take a close look at this church: it's so small it measures only about twelve metres by seven and a half. Its official names are Panagia Gorgoepikoos, “the Virgin who hears quickly”, and Agios Eleftherios, but everyone calls it the Little Metropolis, after the huge cathedral beside it.

1A jigsaw of pagan stones

Its walls are made almost entirely of spolia: pieces of marble reused from earlier buildings. Above the windows you can count around ninety reliefs from very different periods, from antiquity to Byzantine times. There are funerary stelae, geometric patterns, fantastic beasts and, on the main façade, a long ancient frieze that many scholars read as a calendar of Athenian festivals, with figures evoking the months and signs of the zodiac.

2Crosses over the gods

On several pagan reliefs someone later carved a cross, as if to neutralise them or bring them into the new church. No one knows for certain when it was built: for a long time it was said to date from around 1200, in the days of Bishop Michael Choniates, but some researchers place it as late as the 15th century. An old tradition puts it on top of a sanctuary of Eileithyia, goddess of childbirth. After independence, between 1841 and 1863, the church even served as the public library of Athens.

It's an open-air museum that nobody ever designed as one.

3What to look for

  • The calendar frieze above the west door, with its little figures in a row.
  • The carved crosses on reliefs that are clearly much older.
  • The lozenges and rosettes on the south façade.
Reused relief with a lozenge and rosettes on the south façade
One of the recycled reliefs on the south façade.

Documented

The church is built almost entirely from reused marble, some ninety carved pieces, and served as the public library between 1841 and 1863; its construction date is still debated.

Oral tradition

The idea that it stands on a temple of the goddess Eileithyia is an old tradition not confirmed by excavation.

Sources and credits

Bente Kiilerich, Making sense of the spolia in the Little Metropolis in Athens, Arte medievale (2005); Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Byzantine monuments of Athens; Archdiocese of Athens, Church of Agios Eleftherios.

Photos:

  • The Little Metropolis, a domed Byzantine marble church: Jebulon, CC0.
  • Reused relief with a lozenge and rosettes on the south façade: Francesco Bini, CC BY-SA 4.0.

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