International congress of byzantine studies belgrade, 22 27 august 2016

Konstantinos T. Raptis
Hellenic Ministry of Culture, Ephorate of Antiquities of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece; 
[e-mail]
The Sculptural Decoration of Acheiropoietos Basilica (Thessaloniki) 
Re-Evaluated under the Light of a Recent Architectural Analysis of the Monument
Acheiropoietos basilica comprises a phenomenally preserved, typical example of the three-
aisled timber-roofed 
Hellenistic-type
basilica with narthex and galleries, thus fitting more than any 
of the Thessalonican monuments to the standardized Early Byzantine ecclesiastical architecture.
Due to the overall symmetry of its architectural form and the presumable homogeneity of 
its original sculptural decoration, Acheiropoietos is usually considered as the last maintained 
architectural composition of the city that still echoes the aesthetics of the Late Antiquity.
However, based on a recent architectural and sculptural analysis of the monument, it occurs 
that Acheiropoietos was originally erected as a 
Roman-type
basilica without galleries during the last 
decade of the fifth or the first decade of the sixth century (ca. 500). Even though the ground-plan 
of the church remained unaltered through the ages, its upper-structure was later remodeled. The 
galleries, a not surviving clerestory and extended annexes were added during the first —among 

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many— structural restoration of the building that took place during the seventh century, as a result 
of the 620-630 series of earthquakes that devastated large part of the city along with its main urban 
infrastructure and ecclesiastical monuments.
Based on this new evidence, the present paper presents the various architectural sculptures of 
the basilica as: (a) a variety of bases of both the classical and the simplified variations of the attic-ionic 
type, (b) various column shafts, (c) the largest maintained group of twenty nine composite capitals 
with double fined-toothed acanthus leaves at the tribelon, the nave and the outer-narthex colonnade 
that beyond their superficial uniformity are divided in four subgroups, (d) various subtypes of the 
Impost-ionic capitals at the south gallery colonnade, (e) the twenty nine decorated impost-blocks 
that crown the composite capitals of the nave colonnades, (f) the consoles that support the traverse 
arches of the narthex, as well as (g) a variety of different type cornices adorning the masonry of the 
segmental apse and the nave arcades.
At the same time the several types of Constantinopolitan mason marks that connect the 
primary architectural sculptures of the main nave with specific imperial sculptural workshops of 
the sixth century are discussed.
Based on this recent study, the architectural sculptures of the gallery level, that until recently 
were encountered as parts of the original building, have been re-dated and attributed to its second 
phase. At the same time, several, unobserved until now, characteristics of those at the ground-
level —apparently belonging to the first phase sculptural decoration of the basilica— showcase that 
they were not 
tailor-made
for the late fifth-early sixth century basilica; on the contrary they consist 
of (a) ready-made architectural sculptures, made with proconesian marble in Constantinopolitan 
workshops, (b) lower-quality sculptures of local workshops made with white coarse-grained marble 
form the Thassian quarries at Alyki, and (c) secondary, mostly undecorated, architectural members 
as imposts and thresholds that were cut
 
on the building site from marble sarcophagi, looted from 
the abandoned Late Roman cemeteries of the city.