The Cathedral of Mistra

These are photos of the Metropolitan Church of Aghios Demetrios, the oldest of the buildings still standing in the ruined Greek city of Mistra or Mystras in the Peloponnese. It was begun shortly after 1263 by the Metropolitan or Bishop Eugenios of the Diocesan See of Lakedaemon, which used to be centred on the ancient city of Sparta, below on the plain.

The church was built and decorated in several stages, under succeeding metropolitans, the final stage being in the middle of the 15th century when the then Bishop Matthaios had the entire roof removed and a further top floor added to create a women’s gallery, four vaults and five domes. This must have looked very grand but in the interior the renovations had the unfortunate result of spoiling some of the wonderful frescoes: many of the figures from the life of Christ actually lost their heads!

This church is also reputed to be the place where Constantine XI Palaeologos was crowned as the last Emperor of the Romans (they did not call themselves Byzantines then). The site, in a central position under the main dome, is marked by a marble slab bearing a relief of the double-headed eagle, an insignia adopted by the Palaeologos family. The ceremony took place on the 6th January 1449, after which Constantine took ship back to his capital of Constantinople. But he was only to reign for just over 4 years and died in the fighting when the city fell to the Ottoman Sultan Mahmed II in May 1453.

I am writing a trilogy of historical novels which tell the story of Constantine and his brothers and the troubled last years of the Byzantine Empire. The first two books, ‘The Mulberry Tree’ and ‘Constantine’ are now available on Amazon.