Church of Panagia Acheiropiitos
Date - Timespan: 450 - 475 (Early Byzantine Era 324 - 610 AD)

The church is located on Hagias Sofias Street, in the central part of the “intra muros” city of Thessaloniki. It lies north of the main city road, the Byzantine Leoforos (Egnatia Street today), and very close to it. In fact the church had immediate access to this road through a porch attached to its south side. It was built over a big complex of Roman baths, probably one of the most important public buildings of the city. The later church occupied only a part of the preexisting structure, while the east and north part of the baths continued to be in use during the early Byzantine times. Under the floor of the north aisle of the nave three superimposed floors with mosaics and marble slabs were found dating to the roman period. To the northeast corner of the modern yard there are remains of the warm rooms of the baths, too. The church’s name and patron saint is the subject of an ongoing scientific debate. Most scholars, though, believe that the church was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Indeed from the 12th up to the 15th century it was referred to as the Great Church of Theotokos. The name Acheiropoietos was linked to the church in a document of 1320 and means “not made by hand”. It refers to a devotional icon of the Virgin that was worshiped in the church. Written sources attest that the icon depicted Theotokos holding the Child Jesus at her side (“Hodegetria” iconographic type), while it miraculously changed to depict Theotokos standing in a frontal and prayer pose, with her arms raised (“Orant” iconographic type). In Byzantine times the Virgin Mary was venerated in the church together with the city's patron saint Demetrius. Acheiropoietos was probably built in the third quarter of the 5th century AD. It is a typical example of an early Christian three-aisled basilica, with a narthex, galleries and a wooden roof. The building was initially larger, as the initial outer narthex (exonarthex) to the west, the western gallery, the outer portico to the north and the skylight of the central aisle do not survive today. The exonarthex would perhaps correspond to the east portico of the atrium that would have been extended to the west of the church. The approximate dimensions of the building are 51.90 m. by 30.80 m. The side exterior walls are 14 m. high, while the top of the roof of the central aisle lies at a height of 22 m.

The narthex occupies the entire width of the church and on the north side it has a partially saved two-storey staircase that was leading to the basilica’s galleries. Moreover, it communicates, on the one hand, with the side aisles through two arched doors and, on the other hand, with the central aisle through a large tribelon with two columns of green marble from Thessaly. The central aisle is separated from the side ones with two colonnades, each consisting of twelve monolithic columns. The latter are crowned with Theodosian capitals, which were made specifically for this basilica and have common features with those from the Monastery of Stoudios in Constantinople. These capitals are made of marble from the island of Prokonessos, while the floor of the central aisle is made from the same material, too. Initially there were stone parapets between the columns. The sanctuary to the east has a large semicircular niche, in the center of which there is a tri-lobe (initially five-lobe) window with built piers. Moreover, there was a synthronon and the Episcopal throne. The marble iconostasis is modern, while traces on the floor reveal that the original one ended at the third column from the east. A monolithic marble ambone was found in the church, though not in its original position but embedded in the narthex’s masonry. The scholars date it from the 5th to the 7th century.

The walls have rows of multi-lobe windows on both floors of the building and they were constructed using various materials, such as slates, bricks, plaster or even marble spolia from early phases of the church. The annex buildings of the church comprise a porch and two chapels. The monumental porch is formed in the middle of the south side leading to the Byzantine Leoforos. It encloses parts of walls from the roman bath, it has an almost rectangular plan, a barrel vault as ceiling and a pitched roof. To the east of the porch and appended to it and the church, there is today a chapel dedicated to St. Paraskevi. At first, scholars identified it as the basilica’s baptistery, while more recent studies identify it as the church’s diaconicon. Originally it must have had mosaic ornamentation to a great extent, as a preserved fragment indicates. The north aisle of the church leads to the east side to a, formerly two-storey, Middle Byzantine chapel dedicated today to St. Irini. Recently traces of frescoes were found there.

As for the internal decoration, high quality mosaics can be seen today a) in the colonnade intrados on the ground floor and south gallery, b) in the narthex and c) in the window of the west wall. They are only a part of the original ornamentation that had the celestial paradise as its central theme. They depict crosses, geometric patterns, plant and animal motifs, bowls, baskets and other themes with religious symbolism, in a symmetrical arrangement. Recent stylistic analyses push forward the date of the mosaics in the period from the 470s until the first quarter of the 6th century. Inscriptions, found on the intrados of the central and south arch of the tribelon, tell us about the sponsor of the mosaics (and maybe the basilica), a certain Andrew. Scholars suggested that he was a priest that took part in the Council of Chalcedon in 451, but according to the latest studies, he is probably an Archbishop of Thessaloniki. In the south nave, on the wall above the colonnade, frescoes dated in the 13th century are poorly saved but still visible. They depict eighteen from the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, shown either in full length, in profile and full face, or in busts, in medallions.

In 1430, immediately after the fall of Thessaloniki to the Ottomans, Acheiropoietos was the first church to be converted into a mosque. Indeed, the conquest of the city is recorded in an Ottoman inscription on the eighth column in the north colonnade. Another intervention of the Muslims in the building was the addition of a minaret in the southwest corner that was demolished after 1912. Murad II probably chose this church for its location at the very heart of the city. From then on the new mosque was simply called “Camii” and it was, till some point, the only one for the Friday prayer. At the beginning of the 16th century the “Camii” was mentioned in documents as “The old mosque”. Nevertheless, the old name “Acheiropoietos” remained in use for some time after the Ottoman conquest, since it indicated the quarter all around the church. In 1912, when the building was reconverted into a church, it didn’t get the original name (Church of Theotokos) but the one mentioned from at least 1320, Church of Acheiropoietos. In general, travellers of the ottoman era were not mentioning the Acheiropoietos frequently in their journals, since the backfilling had raised the ground level, the houses were almost attached to the church and it was not easily seen. The intense seismic activity in the region along with certain structural weaknesses of the building, led several times during its history to horizontal movement of the columns and the upper parts of the masonry, some parts of which have collapsed. The building survived from at least three earthquakes, in the 7th century, in the late Byzantine or early Post-Byzantine era and in 1978. These disasters have resulted to a number of repair operations to the monument. Studying the structural joints and the different building styles, four phases are distinguished. The first three date back to the Byzantine or Post-Byzantine era, while the last one dates to the beginnings of the 20th century. After being a shelter for refugees from Asia Minor, the church was returned to worship in 1930, after 500 years. The latest consolidation and restoration work was completed in the first years of the 21st century. In general the Acheiropoietos church is one of the most well preserved early Byzantine monuments and one of the most important examples of its kind in Thessaloniki and the whole of Greece.

The intense seismic activity in the region along with certain structural weaknesses of the building, led several times during its history to horizontal movement of the columns and the upper parts of the masonry, some parts of which have collapsed. The building survived from at least three earthquakes, in the 7th century, in the late Byzantine or early Post-Byzantine era and in 1978. These disasters have resulted to a number of repair operations to the monument. Studying the structural joints and the different building styles, four phases are distinguished. The first three date back to the Byzantine or Post-Byzantine era, while the last one dates to the beginnings of the 20th century. After being a shelter for refugees from Asia Minor, the church was returned to worship in 1930, after 500 years. The latest consolidation and restoration work was completed in the first years of the 21st century. In general the Acheiropoietos church is one of the most well preserved early Byzantine monuments and one of the most important examples of its kind in Thessaloniki and the whole of Greece.

Dimensions(Height, Width, Depth): 23.49m,45.12m,56.98m (bounding box)
Materials:pantile, stone, brick
Keywords:Churches, Monasteries, Monastery, Katholika, Late Byzantine, Oriental Orthodox,Christianity,Orthodox Church
 The part of the monument was selected to be 3D digitised within the framework of the European Commission funded 3D-ICONS project by the Athena RC Xanthi's Division. It was captured in 3D using the Structure-From-Motion (SFM) and Dense Multi-View 3D Reconstruction (DMVR) methods. Terrestrial photoshooting sessions were performed during the winter of 2014 during a cloudy day. The terrestrial photoshooting session was implemented using camera tripods. A Samsung NX1000 20MP compact DSLR camera with a 20-50mm lens was used. Agisoft PhotoScan (ver. 1.1) has been used for the production of tombstone 3D digital replica. A total of 6000 photos were used to generated the 3D model. The processing of the image sequences was performed on two computer systems (CPU IntelCoreI74820K 3.7Ghz, 64GB RAM, Radeon R9 290X,Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit). Additionally, empirical measurements between strong (in terms of visibility) feature points on the surface of the tombstone were performed and used to scale the 3D model.

Low Resolution Model: 50K Facets - Image Texture Size:2048^2
Medium Resolution Model: 131K Facets - Image Texture Size:4096^2
High Resolution Model: 560K Facets - Image Texture Size:8192^2
Resolution: ~3cm (between consecutive points distance in raw data model)

For higher resolution versions of the digital replica (raw data) please contact Dr. Anestis Koutsoudis at akoutsou at ceti dot gr.



Copyright 2014 Athena Research Centre. All rights reserved. The 3D ICONS project is funded by the European Commissions ICT Policy Support Programme.
For technical enquiries and additional information related to the 3D-ICONS project or the 3D data displayed in this page please contact Dr. Anestis Koutsoudis at akoutsou at ceti dot gr.