Hagios Athanasios

Department Archive
Collection Byzantine Research Fund
Reference No. BRF/02/01/16/048
Level Item
Place Skopelos
Dates before 1913/1907?
Donor/Creator Wace, Mr Alan John Bayard
Scope and Content Gilded wood-carved templon. Notable are the post-Byzantine icons. This is a Hellenic Society photograph (H.S. 2863). It is initialed (A.J.B.W.) and annotated in pencil at the back.
Further information Skopelos is the second largest island in the Sporades group. The island was inhabited as early as the Minoan period. It fell to the Venetians after 1204 and administratively belonged to the Duchy of Naxos but was recaptured by the Byzantines about seventy years later. Around 120 Byzantine and post-Byzantine churches survive on the island.

Hagios Athanasios, located close to the Venetian castle, is one of the oldest: the church was founded on the ruins of an ancient temple in the 9th or the 11th c. It served as the cathedral of the Kastro and during the 17th c. received an elaborate fresco decoration.
Related records [BSA SPHS 01/1045.2863], Skopelos (town), the screen in the church of Ayios Athanasios, 1905