Tremithous: excavation of the St Spyridon basilica during church restoration

During restoration of the church of St Spyridon in 1966, A. Papageorghiou made soundings inside and outside the building for the Department of Antiquities, at Tremetousia, ancient Tremithous¹. They exposed a mosaic pavement with an iambic inscription commemorating the mosaicist Karterios, and two stylobates with column bases from a basilica that probably had three aisles separated by two rows of columns¹. The annual account describes a second church with piers in place of columns, a wider third church with two rows of piers, and a present church that replaced the third after it was badly damaged toward the end of the Venetian period and was largely restored in the first half of the eighteenth century¹. Hadjichristophi reports a three-aisled basilica of about 26.2 by 15 m as preserved, with traces of a narthex and atrium to the west, and places its construction and mosaic decoration around the end of the fourth century, after the death of St Spyridon, on the evidence of the inscription and mosaic style².