St. Nicolaos

A

t the NE end of the castle there is the exquisite Byzantine church of St. Nicolaos, an attractive cross-in-square church, having an exonarthex wider than the building. Until 1926 many mural remnants were kept in the inside of the church with the usual technique and topics of the Palaeologi period. It was restored in 1937.

Its orthogonal drummed small domes are ornamented with brick decoration. It is one of the very few churches with 2 levels. In the east side of the church, under the bilobed window of the apse there is the entrance to a crypt, in which you can get to through a small staircase. This crypt served the purpose of a cemetery, in other words it was a place were the guards of the castle were buried. The cemetery character of the crypt of St. Nicolaos is reinforced by the few graves' remnants and homan bones that were found.

According to a document dated between 1339 and 1342, and also the shape of the church's stonework we can conclude that the church of St. Nicolaos was built before the Serbian occupation and more specifically in the first half of the 14th century (Paleologi period).