Saint Menas Church, Thessaloniki, Orthodox church in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Saint Menas Church is a three-aisled wooden-roofed basilica begun in 1852 and probably completed in 1891, built under the architect Rallis Plioufas. Its three aisles are divided by two colonnades of six columns each, and a Π-shaped gallery runs above the north, west and south sides. An outer portico is built into the plan, framed by six stone piers 75 cm square on each side, with two Corinthian capitals at the main west entrance. The interior measures 35 by 22.5 m without the apse.
A church dedicated to Saint Menas stood here by the late 5th or early 6th century, and the 9th-century Life of Gregory the Decapolite mentions a church built by the monk Zacharias. After the Ottoman conquest it was one of twelve churches allowed to remain Christian. Rebuilt in 1806 with funding from Ioannis Goutas Kaftantzoglou, it burned in 1839; the present church was begun in 1852 under architect Rallis Plioufas and probably finished in 1891. In 1912 the thanksgiving service for the city's liberation was held here.
The church is dedicated to Saints Menas, Victor and Vincent, and its parish was one of the most populous in Ottoman Thessaloniki, in the district the Turks called Yanık Manastır mahalle. On 26 October 1912, the thanksgiving service (doxologia) for the city's liberation from Ottoman rule was held here. Since 1952 it has again served as a parish church.
The church stands at the corner of Vasileos Irakleiou and Ion Dragoumis streets, in the southeastern part of Thessaloniki's centre, close to the sea. Three doors on the west facade lead directly into the nave, with no narthex in between. The two side entrances in the lateral walls are no longer in use.
In 1569 Sultan Selim II removed six columns from the church, and in 1687 Venetian naval bombardment damaged it; a manuscript of 1885 says the Venetians mistook its tall domes for a mosque. The heart-shaped openings in the west and east gables may refer to the Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart.
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