The old church, like the surrounding area, Zoodohos Pigi Church on Akademia Street, evokes a more insistent, deeper look. The other day, when I was passing there, having previously stopped to see the building of the Greek Conservatory on Feidiou street, with its now forests, I went up the small Gennadiou street, with a characteristic name for the area, and I began to more and more consciously place the church in my frame Zoodohos Pigi.

I am delighted that this church is so old, old by the standards of modern Athens, with the first core of the church built around 1846 according to the plans of Dimitrios Zezos. There is something touching about this church, as it combines rhythms and aesthetic schools with what I think is a beautiful combination of neo-Renaissance and neo-Byzantine rhythms, as in the case of Agios Georgios Karitsis (or Karikis), the work of Lysandros Kavtanzoglou. . Both churches, both built in the 1840s, works of the Athenian Renaissance, have spiers facing west, installed after the construction of the temple. Since then, they have been symbols and break the urban uniformity.

But in Zoodoho Pigi, which was financed by Georgy Gennady (opposite the Academy was, unfortunately, the demolished Gennadey School), the atmosphere around has changed to such an extent that you need to turn on the imagination and emotions. The small pedestrian street of Mavrocordatou, unfortunately, is very unfortunate, and it was also rebuilt, like Emmanuel Benaki at that height. However, there remains a sufficient supply of atmosphere that the church itself exudes, as well as the interwar buildings at the end of Zoodochos Pigi towards the Academy, not to mention the neoclassical building of the Perispomeni publishing house at Gennadeiou 5 street, as well as Feidiou street. with remnants of 19th century Athens to the German Archaeological Institute and remembrance (opposite Harilaou Trikoupi) of the old (and long since demolished) St. Joseph’s school complex. Thus the old church of Zoodochos Pigi, with (pre-war) Neo-Renaissance hagiographies by Tassos Loukidis, is resurrected as a living organism born from the land of Athens. It arises as a gesture of nobility and holiness. This became clearer when I began to notice the marble reliquary on the left side of the temple grounds, dated 1913. She stands there as an altar of faith and walks past unsuspecting passers-by every day. Many of these shrines, built in memory or for the benefit of the poor, were the creations of the Tinian marble sculptors at the beginning of the 20th century or even at the end of the 19th century, and you can see them outside the old churches, in Agia. Irina Eolova, for example, among a noisy and obviously indifferent crowd.

These niches of stopped time, like drops of holiness, in a heavily congested urban landscape restore a form of balance between the cycles of decay, movement, speed. The aesthetic dimension of these calls to contemplation in the rhythm of the city seems to be as important as their very essence. In the shadow of Zoodochos Pigi, among the foliage, this image has survived, carved as if from a rock.