Daphni Monastery

Listen first. Beyond the monastery walls, traffic hums along the old road west of Athens. But inside the enclosure, the sound drops away. Pine needles soften the ground. The air smells of resin and warm stone. Small birds move through the branches above the courtyard. In front of you stands a low church of brick and pale stone, crowned by a single dome. It looks modest from the outside... and that is part of its surprise.

This is Daphni Monastery, on the western edge of greater Athens, near Peristeri and Chaidari. The church inside holds some of the finest Byzantine mosaics anywhere in the world. Daphni was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1990. It shares that listing with two other great monasteries of the same era: Hosios Loukas in central Greece, and Nea Moni on the island of Chios. Together, the three show the high point of Middle Byzantine art.

But the story of this ground begins long before Christianity. The monastery sits on the Sacred Way, the ancient road that ran from Athens to Eleusis. Every year, people walked this road in procession to the Eleusinian Mysteries, secret rites honouring the goddess Demeter. On this spot stood a sanctuary of Apollo. The name Daphni comes from the Greek word for laurel, the plant sacred to Apollo. So the monastery still carries the name of a pagan god's tree.

Here is the first detail most visitors miss. When Christians later built on the site, they reused material from the old temple. One ancient Ionic column survived here into modern times. In the early nineteenth century, agents of Lord Elgin removed it and took it to Britain. That column is now in the British Museum in London. So a small piece of this place stands in the same museum as the Parthenon sculptures.

The church you see today dates from the late eleventh century. It was dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin, the Orthodox feast that marks the death of Mary and her passage into heaven. Look at the shape of the building. It is a cross-in-square plan, but the dome rests on eight supports rather than four. Architects call this the octagon type. It creates a wide, open space under the dome, and it gives the mosaics above a great field of light.

Now step inside, and let your eyes adjust. Then look straight up. From the centre of the dome, Christ Pantocrator looks down at you. Pantocrator means ruler of all. This is not a gentle figure. His brows are drawn together, his eyes are dark and watchful, and he holds a jewelled book of the Gospels. Many art historians call this one of the most severe and powerful images of Christ in Byzantine art. Stand still under it for a moment. The gaze seems to follow you.

Around and below the dome, the walls carry scenes from the life of Christ. You will find the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Baptism in the river Jordan, the Transfiguration, and the Crucifixion. Each scene is set against a background of gold. The gold is made of tiny cubes of glass with gold leaf sealed inside. These cubes are set at slightly different angles. So when light moves across the wall, the surface glows and shifts, almost like water.

Here is the second surprise. Compared to the stern Christ above, many figures in these scenes look calm, graceful, even classical. Their bodies have weight. Their robes fall in natural folds. Their faces are balanced and serene. Scholars often point out that the artists at Daphni drew on the memory of ancient Greek art. So on the very site of Apollo's sanctuary, Christian craftsmen created figures that echo the old Greek ideal of beauty.

In the narthex, the entrance hall at the west end, look for scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary. These come from early Christian stories about her parents and her childhood. They are less familiar to many visitors, but they fit the dedication of the church. The whole building tells one connected story: the life of Mary, the life of Christ, and finally the Dormition, the moment of her death.

The monastery's history did not stay purely Byzantine. In 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade captured Constantinople, and Western lords took control of much of Greece. The new Frankish rulers of Athens gave Daphni to Cistercian monks from France. This was a Catholic order, not an Orthodox one. The Frankish dukes of Athens chose this place for their burials. Look at the porch at the west front. Its pointed arches are a Gothic touch, a quiet sign of those Western centuries.

Later, under Ottoman rule, the monastery returned to Orthodox monks. Over the following centuries, its fortunes rose and fell. The fortified wall around the enclosure is a reminder that monasteries often had to defend themselves. Earthquakes also struck again and again. The Athens earthquake of 1999 caused serious damage, and the church stayed closed for many years while specialists repaired the structure and conserved the mosaics. Some of the scenes you see were lost long ago. The empty patches of plaster are part of the record too.

As you walk around, notice the outside walls. Builders used a technique called cloisonné masonry. Each block of stone is framed by thin red bricks, laid in neat lines. From a distance, the walls look like a pattern of pale squares outlined in red. Some bricks are set in decorative shapes around the windows. It is a simple method, but it gives the plain exterior a warm rhythm. Compare it to the gold inside. The contrast is deliberate.

Before you leave, stand once more in the courtyard. Look at the dome from outside, and think of the face waiting under it. Above you, the pines move in the wind, as they have on this hillside for centuries. The road beyond the wall still follows the line of the Sacred Way. Pilgrims walked here for Demeter, then for Mary. Today, you have walked here too. As you step back into the noise of the city, listen for that moment when the quiet ends.