The principal Orthodox Christian cathedral of Athens, the Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation of the Holy Virgin Mary, is the seat of the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece and the principal venue for the major religious and civil ceremonies of the modern Greek state. The current building was completed on 21 May 1862 after twenty years of construction and is one of the largest cathedrals built in the post-independence period anywhere in the Balkans. The decision to build a new cathedral in central Athens was taken almost immediately after the official establishment of the modern Greek state in 1832. The various small medieval Byzantine churches of the city had served the religious needs of the population through the long Ottoman period but were considered inadequate as the principal cathedral of a modern European capital, and a competition was organised in 1842 for the design of an entirely new building. The winning design by the architect Theophil Hansen was substantially modified during the long construction period that followed, with successive architects Demetrios Zezos, Francois Boulanger and Panagiotis Kalkos contributing to the final form of the building. The result is a composite design that draws on the conventional cross-in-square Byzantine plan of the Greek Orthodox tradition combined with a number of nineteenth-century neoclassical Western European elements particularly in the principal facade and the tall western bell tower. The cathedral was built with stone reclaimed from seventy-two demolished smaller Byzantine churches of central Athens, providing a deliberate symbolic continuity between the older medieval Christian architectural tradition of the city and the new nineteenth-century cathedral. The reclaimed stone is visible particularly in the lower walls of the cathedral, with various recognisable architectural elements from the older churches incorporated into the rusticated lower bands of the new building. The interior was decorated through the second half of the nineteenth century by a succession of Greek and Russian iconographers working in the traditional Byzantine icon-painting style. The principal iconostasis at the eastern end of the nave is one of the more elaborate examples of the nineteenth-century Greek Orthodox iconographic tradition, with the various icons of the principal saints arranged in the standard four-tier sequence. The cathedral is the venue for the principal Greek royal weddings, funerals and state religious ceremonies, and the major Easter celebrations on the small Mitropoleos square outside the cathedral remain one of the most heavily attended religious events of the Athenian calendar.

Type: Tourist Attraction

Address: Mitropoleos, Athens, Greece

Opening Date: 21/05/1862