Kaisariani Monastery

Remains of a large early Christian basilica lie to the west, over which a smaller church was built in the 10th/11th centuries.

[1] When, in 1458, the Turks occupied Attica, Sultan Mehmed II went to the monastery and, according to Jacob Spon (1675), a French doctor from Lyon, that is where he was given the key to the city.

In 1678, Patriarch Dionysius IV of Constantinople defined the monastery as Stauropegic, that is to say, free and independent of the metropolitan bishop: its only obligation was to perform funeral rites.

[citation needed] During its apogee, it had hosted many significant spiritual figures of the time, such as Theophanis in 1566 and Ioannis Doriano in 1675, the Abbot Izekel Stephanaki, who was knowledgeable in Greek literature and history, and more particularly, Platonic philosophy.

According to the demogerontes (the council of elders) of the time, "the manuscripts were sold to the English as membranes whereas the rest of the documents were used in the metropolis` kitchens."

A high wall surrounds the buildings, the catholicon (main church), the refectory, the bathhouse and the cells, so that, even today, they seem quite well protected.

The catholicon is dedicated to the Presentation of the Theotokos in the Temple and had the basic cross shape, faithful to Greek tradition, according to M. Sotiriou, or the semicircular quadripartite according to Anastassios Orlandos.

The wealthy Benizelos family subsidized the frescoes, painted in 1682 by Ioannis Ypatos, from the Peloponnese, according to the inscription on the western wall.

On the bi-partite rosette, are depicted: the Preparation of the Throne, the Virgin, John the Forerunner, the angels and a composite fresco of the Four Evangelists are represented.

These small pendentives, which support the protective roof, have been destroyed because, as we have previously mentioned, it was transformed into an olive press.

Eleven years later, the Minister of Cultural Affairs appointed the Philodasiki Enosi Athinon, a Greek NGO, to administer the restoration of the bath house under the supervision of the First Byzantine and Meta-Byzantine Archeological Service.

In cooperation with the Archeological Service, the Philodasiki restored the complex of the Holy Monastery of Kaisariani between 1952-1955; the association supervised and funded all of the works.