Hagios Athanasios

Department Archive
Collection Byzantine Research Fund
Reference No. BRF/02/01/10/010
Level Item
Place Chalandritsa
Dates 1905-1909
Donor/Creator Traquair, Mr Ramsay
Scope and Content View from the north. Further annotation in pencil survives at the back of the photograph.
Further information The village of Chalandritsa lies 12 miles south of Patras. It preserves the name of the barony conferred by Champlitte on Audebert de la Tremouille after the Frankish invasion of the Peloponnese that started soon after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders in 1204 and was completed between 1246 and 1250. The barony survived undivided until the end of the 13th c.

Hagios Athanasios is almost identical to the Koimesis church. However, it is smaller and the square sanctuary here is covered by a rough quadripartite rib vault. The monument is surrounded by a Turkish arcade of pointed arches. Its date is much disputed. Certainly, it does not belong to the early Latin or the Byzantine period. It has been suggested that the church may have been built during the 15th or the 18th c.