Abstract
The Church of the Holy Monastery of Kykko has undergone many reconstructions and constructional changes since its Imperial Byzantine establishment at the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th centuries. The monastery, housing the famous Icon of the Holy Virgin, is said to have been established by Constantinopolitan funding from the Emperor Alexios Comnenos. Historical records have informed us that the monastic complex burnt down in the 14th century and was rebuilt in 1366 by the Frankish King, Peter Lusignan. It was destroyed by fire a second time and was rebuilt a year later in 1542. In 1751 a third fire partly destroyed the monastic complex and most likely became the pretext for the expansion of the church complex, defying strict Ottoman rules against any such action. The church underwent a large-scale embellishment in the 1970’s and acquired a new concrete roof which hid the existing one, preserving many ancient secrets in the in-between space. The monument was architecturally documented and researched for the first time in 1998 by the author, but the roof was then inaccessible for study. A recent preliminary research of the old roof structure, which had been hidden and stripped of its more recent coverings, confirmed the historical records referring to the many reconstructions and also revealed many constructional phases of the famous edifice. Through three-dimensional modeling of the church, the newer phases are stripped away, thus revealing possibly the original church and its preserved typological integrity, hidden inside the many reconstructions carried on during the centuries. Step by step, the newer phases are visually added on, to allow a new understanding of this much venerated but so far little studied monument.
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Notes
- 1.
Here I am correcting what I believe is a mistake in the translation by Grishin. He mistakenly refers to five doors on the west side instead of three plus two on the other two sides. Five doors on a west elevation of any church are almost improbable.
- 2.
Lampadistis monastery in Kalopanayiotis has an extensive wooden roof that covers the whole system of vaults and domes underneath.
- 3.
An inscription with the year 1760 and the name of the master builder «Ιωάννη» (John) is carved on the round window of the refectory.
- 4.
These were documented in the year 1998 by the team of architects: Nasso Chrysochou, Maria Philokyprou, Eleni Petropoulou, Artemis Pseftodiakos. Since then they have been closed off.
- 5.
The tiles appear in old archival photos, but we cannot exclude the possibility that these are the tiles from an earlier roof.
- 6.
Wooden roofed churches of the Troodos region and of the same period are Panagia Podithou Galata (1513 and 1514) and the church of Panagia Kakopetria (1520).
- 7.
This monument has similarly undergone many restorations and extensions but has started like the Kykko Catholicon as a cross-inscribed plan which based on surviving frescoes, has a terminus ante quem in the 14th century. What remains of the old plan, as in the case of Kykko, is the cross with the dome, while the west arm of the cross was removed in 1867 (according to an inscription over the western door) in order to extend the church westwards with cross vaults in the main and side aisles. The west most bay was added later in 1910, as was the case of the Kykko Catholicon.
- 8.
In a cross inscribed church, the proportions of the middle aisle to the side aisles is usually that of 1:2 as is the present church. Given that the apse is dated to the 16th c then the middle aisle must follow a similar width of approximately 4.7 m as is the present one, giving us an approximate width of 2.35 m for the side aisles. Their actual width at the piers is about 3 m which is close enough.
- 9.
In his first account he mentions the dome windows and in the second he describes the roof and dome as covered by a wooden roof.
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Chrysochou, N. (2019). Decryption, Through the Collaboration of Historical Accounts and Technology, of the Hidden Phases of Construction of the Church of the Holy Monastery of Kykko in Cyprus. A Preliminary Report. In: Moropoulou, A., Korres, M., Georgopoulos, A., Spyrakos, C., Mouzakis, C. (eds) Transdisciplinary Multispectral Modeling and Cooperation for the Preservation of Cultural Heritage. TMM_CH 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 962. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12960-6_6
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