Article,
Patara: due casi di architettura bizantina e la continuità urbana
Orientalia Christiana Periodica, (2009)
Abstract
This study illustrates the significance of the urban continuity of the city of Patara in
Lycia via the analytical study of two medieval churches, the “Spring Basilica” and the
church in Kastron. The former church has not yet been studied at all but only referred
to by the archeologists who have worked the site, whereas the latter church has been
excavated without, however, being subjected to a suitable architectonic and ideological
evaluation. The “Spring Basilica,” by its radical architectonic transformation during
the High Middle Ages, witnesses to an initial shrinking of the city at that time. The
second church, located within the medieval city (kastron), reproposes ideologically in a
later period (11th c.) an ancient church whose entire architectonic and liturgical
disposition is typical of the 5-6th c. In the context of this historico-architeconic
perspective the author also confronts the meaning of the liturgical changes due to
those same historical forces that substantially modified the very urban plan itself.
