How a small church in Athens ended up under the arcades of a building

Seen from the Parthenon or Lycabettus hilltops, Athens is a silver-white sea of low-rise houses, resulting from the sequence of demolitions and reconstructions that followed the demographic boom of the mid-1950s. Many neoclassical and art-deco buildings paid the consequences of this sudden expansion, but older buildings were not spared either.

Agia Dynami, on Mitropoleos Street, is a small sixteenth-century Orthodox church. When the local government planned of demolishing it to make room for the new building of the Education and Religion Ministry, the diocese vigorously protested. Despite prolonged negotiations, no agreement could be reached, and the government determined to leave the church under the arcades of the new construction. The building that once stood in place of the church was not treated with the same respect. Some ancient inscriptions found inside the basilica suggest that Agia Dynami was erected in place of a small temple dedicated to Heracles.