Holy Church of the Virgin Mary Gorgoepikoos and Saint Eleutherius
Tiny Byzantine church built entirely from reused ancient marble reliefs, including a rare calendar frieze.
This guide to the Holy Church of the Virgin Mary Gorgoepikoos in Athens opens with a carved stone ship on the west wall, the only surviving image of the ceremonial Panathenaic vessel that once carried a robe for Athena through the ancient city. It follows how, in the 1100s, roughly ninety pieces of classical and Byzantine marble, grave markers, temple friezes, and calendar carvings, were cemented together under archbishop Michael Choniates to build this small church. It also traces the ground beneath it, once home to a temple for the goddess women prayed to in childbirth, and the name the church carried by 1862.
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