Palaeologan Veria: A Peripheral Center under the Perspective of Its Monuments The Case of the Marble Decoration from the Old Metropolitan Cathedral as a Possible Donation by Christian Members of the Seljuk Dynasty

Abstract

The restoration work carried out by the Ephorate of Antiquities of Imathia at the Old Metropolitan Cathedral in Veria has restored for the city its most important Byzantine church, a monumental palimpsest that recorded centuries of the history of the city and its people1. The Middle Byzantine three-aisled basilica with transept was renovated by the Despots of Epirus and again during the era of the Palaiologan Dynasty. It was converted into a mosque around the turn of the 17th century and remained Veria’s great imperial mosque until the liberation of the city in 1912 [53, pp. 134–245, 265–271]. The first conservation and exploratory excavation work began in the 1960s [13, pp. 249–250] and continued, albeit limited in scope and duration, until systematic restoration work on the monument eventually began (Ill. 32). This essay presents sculptures that came to light during the first phase of the investigations and the main phase of the restoration of the Old Metropolis in 2011–2015. They form a group with common stylistic features and are associated with a phase of renewal of the church’s liturgical furnishings in the first two decades of the 14th century, when the ecclesiastical seat of Veria was raised from an Archdiocese to a Metropolitan seat [44, pp. 58–59]. The group of sculptures in question was first discovered in the period 1978–1980, when Professor Theocharis Pazaras, curator of antiquities of the newly founded 11th Ephorate of Byzantine Antiquities, noticed characteristic groups of cornices, columns and slabs while arranging the collection of sculptures stored in the twin Ottoman bath [45, p. 161]. In the following years, the group was enriched thanks to the research work conducted by Professor Efthy-