Church of Saint Nicholas Orphanos

**By accident, and thanks to what looked at the time like desecration.** When the church became a mosque under Ottoman rule its walls were **limewashed** to cover the human images. That lime sealed them from air, damp, smoke and light for centuries, preserving their colour and detail while frescoes in churches that stayed exposed decayed. When the coating was removed in the twentieth century the paintings emerged almost complete. The same story repeated in many Byzantine churches across Greece and Turkey — a great deal of the finest surviving Byzantine art came through under a layer of lime.

The city is called an **open-air museum of Byzantine art**, and **fifteen** of its monuments are inscribed together by UNESCO. The most important for a visitor: the **Rotunda** (a massive fourth-century Roman building that became a church then a mosque, with gold mosaic), **Agios Dimitrios** (the patron's church, with its crypt), **Hagia Sophia** (a domed church with ninth-century mosaic), **Acheiropoietos** (among the oldest surviving churches in the world, fifth century), and this church **for its frescoes**. ⚠ Their hours vary and many close at midday — plan them for the morning.