The Byzantine castle town of Servia lies on a rocky hill at the mouth of a narrow gorge; its location is naturally fortified. The terrain and fortifications are closely connected here: the setting on the hill and at the gorge’s mouth helps explain the castle town as a spatial complex, not just as a collection of individual monuments. There are two perspectives to consider when placing it in its historical context: the surviving defensive walls and the ecclesiastical buildings of the Lower Town. Each illustrates a different scale of the site—the walls in the context of the castle town, and the religious buildings within the lower urban area.
Fortifications and ecclesiastical buildings
Most of the surviving defensive walls date from the Middle Byzantine period of the 11th and 12th centuries. They provide a chronological reference point for the history of the fortifications. The Lower Town is also home to three well-preserved ecclesiastical buildings: an 11th-century basilica, the Church of St. John the Baptist and the Monastery of the Holy Theodoroi. This group makes sacred architecture a second theme of the castle town, alongside its fortifications.
The Lower Town as a distinct area
The Lower Town covers 75 stremmata. This area measurement and the three buildings complement one another: the Lower Town can be understood as a spatial area, while the basilica, church and monastery provide concrete points of reference for its sacred character. The area measurement describes the extent of the district, not an individual monument. This makes it possible to consider the Lower Town’s spatial extent and its different ecclesiastical buildings as two distinct aspects.
The basilica’s design and history
The Basilica of the Catechumens has three aisles, a narthex and a raised central nave. “Three-aisled” refers to the division into a central nave and two side aisles; the narthex is an entrance vestibule in the church building. The raised central nave describes the building’s vertical arrangement. These terms help break the architecture down into individual aspects, rather than simply describing it as a basilica in general. The building was also altered several times between the 12th and 16th centuries. Its spatial arrangement and long history of alterations answer different questions: how the building is laid out and over what period changes took place.
Three layers of wall paintings
The surviving wall paintings also give the basilica its own distinct chronology. Three layers have been preserved in total: the first belongs to the original construction phase, the second dates from the 13th century and was created during the time of Bishop Michael, and the third dates from the 15th to the 16th century. The basilica therefore contains evidence of both its original construction phase and significantly later centuries. The alterations span the 12th to the 16th century; the paintings form a separate sequence of three surviving layers. The building’s history and its wall paintings thus offer two different perspectives on the basilica’s chronology.
Discover more destinations: Livadero, Elati, Vlasti, Emporio, Kaloneri, Koila, Tsotyli, Aiani.
For the main travel overview: Kozani.
