Daphni Monastery

Daphni stands on the Sacred Way, the ancient road from Athens to Eleusis, on the site of a temple of Apollo whose columns were reused in the monastery walls; the name comes from the laurel, daphne, sacred to the god. The present church dates to about 1080 and its interior is sheathed in gold-ground mosaics of extraordinary quality, dominated by the Christ Pantokrator in the dome, a severe, unforgettable face looking down from the gold. UNESCO listed it in 1990 together with Hosios Loukas and Nea Moni of Chios as the great trio of middle Byzantine mosaic churches. A 1999 earthquake damaged the building badly and closed it for years; painstaking restoration has since reopened it, though access is sometimes limited to parts of the complex.

What you actually see

• The Pantokrator mosaic - the dome Christ, the most famous face in Byzantine art.
• The mosaic cycle - gospel scenes in gold across the vaults and walls.
• The church exterior - an eleventh-century octagonal-plan Byzantine building.
• The monastic wall - fortified enclosure with reused ancient masonry.

When to go

Year-round; the church interior is the point and weather barely matters. Opening days are limited and change, so check before making the trip out.

Honest expectations

This is a single small church, seen in half an hour, reached through unlovely western suburbs beside a motorway. Restoration scaffolding has come and gone for years and some areas may be closed. For anyone who cares about Byzantine art, the mosaics justify all of it.

Nearby

Eleusis lies further west along the same ancient road; central Athens is twenty minutes east.