Churches of Mt Menalon

Zoodochos Pigi church
in Paleochori (Elati)

The church of Zoodochos Pigi is a newer church founded in 2000 and completed two years later. The church was built on the site of the ruined chapel of Zoodochos Pigi, the parish church of the old Garzenikos settlement. Garzenikos was dissolved at the beginning of the 19th century, when its inhabitants moved to today's Elati.

The church was designed by Argyris Petronotis, a professor of Architecture from Stemnitsa. Petronotis designed a single-aisled church of the cruciform type, a form that combines an imposing presence without the need for large volume and preserves the symbolic shape of the cross. The cruciform pattern is the preferred type of large church in Greece, from the late Byzantine period until the end of the Ottoman rule.

The cruciform church appears after the 13th century and thanks to its symmetrical shape and rational static system it answers the need for a safe building, which is done relatively quickly and economically. The choice during the 18th and 19th centuries of the cruciform type for parish churches in Arcadia reflects the ease of completion of such a building compared to domed basilicas and is allegorized by the legendary "40-day period" allowed by the Turkish administration for the construction of churches, in order to limit their size.

Internally, Zoodochos Pigi has a longitudinally pitched arch, which is interrupted by a higher transverse arch, so that the free space clearly forms the shape of the cross.

The project was implemented under the supervision of a 12-member committee from Elati.

Text and photos by T. Adamakopoulos