Aikaterinh Balla Source: C.E.T.I. © Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace

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The Metropolitan Church of Aghios Athanasios is situated within the Byzantine city of Didymoteicho. Built in 1834, it contains wonderful portable icons, votive gifts from various groups of the city and landscape paintings placed on the closure panel of the wood carved iconostasis. Part of a Byzantine funerary chapel lies adjacent to the north side of the church. This chapel formed part of the imperial Monastery with Byzantine and post Byzantine wall paintings, engravings and rock-cut spaces. King Charles XII of Sweden is believed to have been imprisoned in one of the monastery’s rooms. The ancillary building is a narrow, oblong structure having arcosolia along the two long sides and two ossuaries under the floor. The elaborated masonry of carved stones dates the building to the first half of the 14th century and recalls the Constantinopolitan architecture.