What I can see

It is not very common to see monasteries in the city centre. The Monastery of Agia Theodora (dedicated to Agia Theodora Myrovlitria) and the Vlatadon Monastery in Ano Poli, are the only surviving monasteries from the Byzantine era. The buildings of the monastery, however, are newer, as the older ones were burned in fires. The newer buildings housed students and the church school. Relics of Saint Theodora and Saint David are housed in the chapels.

What I can't see

It was a women’s monastery, originally dedicated to the martyr Stephanos. During the Ottoman period, it was also called the monastery of Small Agia Sophia, due to the church’s architectural similarity with that of Agia Sophia. Only few parts of the monastery’s original Byzantine church survive in the basements of a wing and under Ermou Street. Both the depth of the original church and the orientation of the sanctuary to the south (probably followed the same structure of an earlier Roman building) place it in the mid- Byzantine period.

Info

• Address: 34 Ermou St.

Bibliography