---

Modern Description: Gathered in front of a south-facing shore surrounded by hills and with beautiful views across the water into Boeotia and Phthiotis, Limni is an attractive centre from which to explore the rural areas of northern central Euboea. Little remains of ancient Elymnion to which Limni is the modern successor. The earliest vestiges are to be found at the curious church of the Panaghítsa which stands in a small square about three blocks inland and to the right of the ‘Eirinidikteio' building on the waterfront next to the statue of Lela Karayiannis – a martyr of the underground resistance movement in Greece during the Second World War. The church looks more like a low, squat house, with a single apsidal extension in its northeast corner: the row of small columns to its north survive from an Early Byzantine predecessor on this site, believed to date from the reign of Justinian in the 6th century and destroyed two hundred years later by Saracen raiders. In the interior is an area of late Roman mosaic floor from an ancient bathing complex. In the floor of the apse, visible through two low arches, the mosaic has decorative representations of fish and marine animals which, given their importance also as Christian symbols, may explain the construction of the church over this area of the Roman baths in the first place. A marble statue of Hercules (now in the Museum in Chalcis) was found on the site in 1856: more floor-mosaic and other later finds are in the local museum and the Byzantine Museum in Athens.
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elymnion
Wikidata ID: Q5368474
Trismegistos Geo: 34092

Info: McGilchrist's Greek Islands

(From McGilchrist’s Greek Islands, © Nigel McGilchrist 2010, excerpted with his gracious permission. Click for the books)

---