About 11 km from the centre of Athens, in the town of Haidari (a suburb of Athens), next to the picturesque Daphne grove, one of the most famous Orthodox shrines of Greece and one of the most important monuments of Byzantine architecture, the Daphne Monastery, is located.
The Daphne Monastery was founded in the 6th century on the site of the sanctuary of Apollo, which was destroyed in 395. Some architectural fragments of the ancient sanctuary were partially used as building material, including the Ionic columns, of which you can see only one in the monastery today, as the rest were exported in the 19th century to England by Lord Elgin. However, little of the original and very small monastery has survived to this day, and the structure that can be seen today was mostly built after the middle of the 11th century.
Large-scale construction of the monastery complex began around 1080 during the heyday of the Byzantine Empire. The catholicon, an octagonal cross-domed church with a narthex, belongs to this period. The exonarthex was built somewhat later, probably in the early 12th century. Some architectural additions were made to the monastery complex in the 13th century, after the monks of the Catholic Cistercian order settled in the monastery and lived there until 1458, when the Turks captured Athens and by the decision of the Sultan the monastery was returned to the Orthodox Church.
In the 19th century the Daphne Monastery was for some time a military garrison, and then an institution for the insane was set up within its walls. In 1887 and 1897 the monastery was seriously damaged by earthquakes. During the same period, the Greek Archaeological Society was thoroughly involved in the research of the ancient monastery. In 1990, Dafni Monastery, together with such famous Byzantine monuments as Nea Moni and Osios Loukas, was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
It is worth noting that Dafni Monastery became world famous largely due to the excellent Byzantine mosaics (late 11th - early 12th century) depicting biblical scenes, saints and prophets that adorn it and have survived to this day.
Near the monastery once ran the so-called Sacred Way, the road from Athens to Eleusinus, which many centuries ago was used by the participants of the solemn procession during the legendary Eleusinian Mysteries.
