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.

History

The monastery was founded towards the end of the 6th century on the site of a sanctuary of Apollo desecrated by the Goths in 395; one of its Ionic columns was built into the church wall, and Lord Elgin later took others to London, where they are in the British Museum. The first fortified monastery declined after the invasions of the 9th and 10th centuries and was rebuilt in the 11th and 12th, when the octagonal church, a refectory and a cemetery chapel replaced the old basilica, probably with craftsmen from Constantinople. Frankish crusaders sacked it in 1205, Othon de la Roche gave it to the Cistercians of Bellevaux, who added a Gothic cloister and arches and made it a burial place for knights, and they left in 1458 after the Ottoman conquest of Athens (Wikipedia, Daphni Monastery).

Highlights

• 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.

Before you go

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.

Key facts