GR PELOPONNESE KORINTHIA NEMEA EVANGELISTRIA

On the western side of the rocky Evangelistria hill - also called 'Stadium hill' because the ancient stadium sits on its foot - a tolerable dirt road leads to its top where you will find the fundaments of an Early Christian basilica. It is a ruined fifth- or sixth-century three-aisled basilica church with walls of the apse still standing to a height of 0.50 m. The pottery retrieved was limited to only a handful of sherds, none of them really diagnostic.

There is a story that the basilica was discovered after an old woman in the village had a dream which told her to go up on top of the hill and dig there. She did what the dream asked and found an ancient icon amidst the ruins of an old church. When hearing about this the villagers rushed up the hill and excavated the Early Christian basilica with their farming tools revealing its full plan. - This is an inventio tale, very common in the oral tradition of modern Greece. The stories conceive the landscape as having places of latent sacredness that persist through time even if temporarily obscured.

Above left: terracotta member of the basilica wall. - Views from Evangelistria hill to the South (above right), to the North (below left) and to the Sanctuary of Zeus (below right).