Byzantine churches
There are numeous bazantine churches in the neighbourhood of plaka,in the narrow streets between the houses. Among the oldest is the little church of the Transfiguration of the Saviour in Theorias street, at the north foot of the Acropolis, which is dated to the second half of the eleventh century. At the junction of Erechtheos and Erotokritou streets stands the church of St John the Theologian, which is a twelfth-century building and survives in good condition. A short distance beyond, in prytaneiou street, is St Nichalas Rangavas, a typical Byzantine church of the eleventh-twelfth century, to which several additions were made in 1987-1978. Close to the monument of Lysikrates is the church of St Catherine, a dependency(metochi) of the homonymous monastery on Mount Sinai. It was built in the eleventh-twelfth century on the site of an Early Christian basilica, remnants of which can be seen in its courtyard. Another surviving Byzantine church, one of the earliest in Athens, is that of the Saviour of Kottakis, at the corner of Kydathination and Sotiros streets. It was built around the end of the tenth century.
THE ODEUM OF HERODES ATTICUS
Tiberius Claudius Atticus Herodes was an extremely wealthy magnate and sophist, an Athenian citizen from the demos of Marathon, who lived in the second century AD.
In AD 161 he built the odeum in Athens, in memory of his wife Aspasia Annia Regilla. The Odeum of Herodes Atticus conforms to the type of Roman theatres. The skene, 35.40 metres long, is two-storeyed. The orchestra was 18.80 metres in diameter and paved with black and white tiles of marble from Karystos on the island of Euboea. The cavea comprises 32 rows and seats and can accommodate an audience of about 5,000.
The Odeum was covered by a roof of cedar wood. The facade, a large part of which still stands, was grandiose in aspect, three-storeyed and with arched linetels.