HISTORY
DESCRIPTION
INFORMATION
PHOTOGALLERY
 
 
© Ministry of Culture and Sports

A number of buildings and water cisterns in a reasonable state of preservation survive around the site. Among these are the foundations of an Early Christian basilica with semicircular apses and monolithic marble columns. N-NE of Palaiokastro spreads the plain of Arkasa with two harbours which have been in use since ancient times. Two Early Christian basilicas were excavated by Italian archaeologists between 1912 and 1940. The largest and nearest to the harbours is known by the name of a donor, the presbyter Alypus. After its destruction in the early6th c., the basilica was rebuilt and embellished with splendid mosaic pavements bearing inscriptions which mention a bishop, Cyrus, and the name of the saint the church was dedicated to, St. Anastasia. The second basilica is that of presbyter Eucharistus. Three more basilicas have been identified in Arkasa, of which one, dedicated to St. Michael, was a funerary church. At the east side of the settlement stand two middle-Byzantine churches, Panayia (Our Lady) Marmarini and St. George.
Author
Vassilis Karampatsos, archaeologist