Greece - Arta, Church of St. Theodora

The church of St. Theodora - the patron saint of Arta - is an important Byzantine church. Originally it was the katholikon of a monastery, where Theodora, the wife of Despot of Epirus Michael II Komnenos Doukas (1236-1271), was buried.

The originally church was built - over the ruins of an older structure - in the 11th or 12th century as a three-aisled wooden-roofed basilica. This shape has remained almost unchanged till to this day. Around the year of 1270 Theodora renovated the church by adding the nartex and two pediments of the main church. The open colonnaded exonarthex was added in the lat 13th or early 14th century.

Nowadays the Church of St. Theodora is considered being one of Arta’s most important monuments, not only for its morphology but mainly because this church is like a living connection of the present city with its Byzantine past since it is dedicated to its queen, the city’s Saint Theodora.