When Constantinople fell to the crusaders in 1204, the Byzantine Empire shattered. One of its fragments took root at Arta and became the Despotate of Epirus, rival to Nicaea and Trebizond. Its princes built the Panaghia Parigoritissa, a thirteenth-century masterpiece whose dome rests on reused ancient columns, and the monastery of Vlacherna, where Saint Theodora of Arta lies buried. The venerable icons and relics kept here bear witness to a faith the faithful still come to draw upon at the great feasts, with a reverence that has never faded.
On the island in Lake Ioannina, eight monasteries have followed one another since 1291, among them Saint Nicholas Philanthropinon with its rare frescoes showing the philosophers of antiquity beside the saints: you can walk the whole island in under an hour. Higher up, among the stone villages of Zagori, the monastery of Saint Paraskevi at Monodendri clings to the edge of the Vikos gorge, one of the deepest in Europe. Nearby, the ancient oracle of Dodona recalls that the sacred was sought here long before the Gospel arrived.
