Amidst the hustle and bustle of everyday life, the restored church of Agioi Theodoros was quietly revealed at the bottom of Klathmonos square. It’s a comforting sight. There, at the junction of Euripides, Aristidos and Dragatsaniou streets, this 11th century church, with its great historical and artistic value, reminds us that there are other things in our lives for which we should be careful.
All the scholars of Athens have dealt with the Saints Theodoros. The excavations of 1967 around the temple showed remains of older buildings, an older temple, but also a villa from Roman times. The superimposed layers of the history of Athens come together miraculously in its Byzantine churches.
But of course, as almost everywhere in Athens, the newer Greek civilization preserved a poor residential environment. Manolis Hatzidakis had written, when he was director of the Benaki Museum (from 1941 to 1973): “A deep well will be formed by the towering commercial buildings, brilliant and shiny, and in the background, squeezed from everywhere, it will remain, ancient and insignificant , a small church of the 11th century”. He wrote these during the years of intensive post-war reconstruction and he had pointed out exactly the same for Kapnikarea (when the Valsamakis building with the glass curtains had been erected).
As a temple that had suffered many additions and damages, Agioi Theodori brings us the measure of harmony and essential beauty in simplicity. Charalambos Bouras had written that the new painted decoration with oil colors was probably done around 1910, when the new paving and the removal of the interior coatings were carried out. Eleni-Anna Chlepa in her book “Byzantine monuments in modern Greece” (published by Capon) tells us that in 1910 a department of the Ministry of Ecclesiastical Affairs and Public Education was established for the first time with the purpose of preserving “ancient monuments”. But it was also in that year (1910) that the temple would “sink” and be cut off from the surrounding streets, as another perception of urban space had begun to prevail. The new restoration of the temple with modern concepts comes to sum up a long experience of using, abusing and highlighting the historical treasures of Athens. What is needed now is the architectural reconstruction of the 2-3 particularly ugly buildings that surround this monument of the capital.
