Church of St. Nicholas Rangavas

Beneath the octagonal dome stands a small church at the foot of the Acropolis of Athens. Stone and brick come together here in dense old masonry, while the bell tower beside it appeared much later than the church itself. Inside and in the narthex, objects remain that parishioners have watched over for generations.

A short prayer is carved into a marble column of the dome: “Lord, help Your servant Leon Rangavas.” Historians do not know exactly who Leon was. He lived in Athens or came here in the middle of the eleventh century and probably paid for the church’s construction. The Rangavas family was a noble Byzantine family; Emperor Michael I Rangabe also belonged to it, but Leon’s kinship with the emperor has not been proven. The inscription confirms the main point: the church’s second name comes from the family whose funds made its construction possible. St. Nicholas is the church’s heavenly patron, and Leon Rangavas its possible founder.

The most important object inside is much younger than the walls. It is a small bell that the church community hid while Ottoman orders prohibited bell-ringing. To use it openly meant losing it: bells in other Athenian churches were removed or silenced.

By the spring of eighteen thirty-three, the independent Greek state already existed, yet the Ottoman garrison still occupied the Acropolis of Athens. On March thirty-first, the commandant handed the fortress over to officers sent by the new King Otto, and the soldiers left Athens. The church’s keepers then brought out the hidden bell and struck it. According to Athenian tradition, it was the first to sound; according to another record, it was the only church bell heard that day. The city immediately learned of the fortress’s formal handover.

The signal came from precisely here, at the foot of the Acropolis of Athens: above the church, the garrison was still leaving, while below, the object parishioners had preserved for such a day was already ringing. The bell is still kept in the narthex. The bell tower standing beside it was added only after nineteen seventeen—it is younger than the bell for which it seems intended.