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Church of the Acheiropoietos

Church of the Acheiropoietos

Photo: Herbert Frank from Wien (Vienna), AT · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Thessaloniki, Greece
Client / Owner
—
Year
Completed 5th century
Access
Public
Typology
Spiritual

The Church of the Acheiropoietos in Thessaloniki dates to the 5th century. The infobox says completed in the 5th century, while bricks and mosaics suggest about 450 to 470, possibly making it the city's earliest surviving church. The article names no architect or client. It was altered in the 7th century and again in the 14th and 15th centuries. After the 1430 conquest, Sultan Murad II had it converted into a mosque.

It is a three-aisled basilica, 92 feet (28 m) wide and 120 feet (36.5 m) long, with a semicircular eastern vault and a western narthex flanked by towers. The roof is wooden and lower than the original. Details include Ionian capitals from a Constantinopolitan workshop, green Thessalian marble columns and Proconnesian marble paving.

Early 13th-century frescoes of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste decorate the south side. It is now an active Greek Orthodox church.

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