Posts Tagged With: Greece

More South of France and More Cyclades: Trip Overview

Posted on September 25, 2026 by WolfeStreetTravel

After our domestic forays earlier this year to the Pacific Northwest and Southwest and Maryland’s Eastern Shore, as well as a brief stint to country #82 in the Caribbean, we headed back to Europe for our latest trip.

The first trip to Europe, as it happened, where both WolfeStreetTravelers passed through EU immigration using our EU passports:

We had two, segmented goals for this trip:

Explore three towns in France that allegedly were comparable in some ways to our home town, Old Town Alexandria, and were therefore potential home base candidates in Europe
Return Greece to visit more Cyclades islands, after fantastic trips to Santorini, Myconos, and Delos in 2017; and Paros in 2022.

Plus, as an added bonus, a little appendix to the Greek islands jaunt with a leg on the mainland to join the Seattles in checking out epic, millenia-old Orthodox monasteries perched on the clifftops of Meteora in northern Greece.

More South of France Leg

Our ongoing quest to locate a suitable home base in Europe has intensified, now that we also have Irish and German citizenship and can stay / reside in Europe without time restrictions. Home bases we’ve previously considered include Uzes in French Languedoc; Arles in French Provence (home to WolfeStreetTravel’s Gallic fountain avatar); Ronda in Spanish Andalusia; Lucca and Sienna in Italian Tuscany; and Rovinj in Croatian Istria. None of these fit the bill exactly (although Lucca, Ronda, and Rovinj are all high-scoring candidates that we’ll visit again [and already have, in the case of Rovinj]).

After quite a bit of consideration and research with our AI buddies, we targeted the South of France as the best place for us to continue our search – we wanted the southern European / Mediterranean lifestyle, cuisine, and architecture and France was more centrally located than Spain, Italy, or Croatia, the other Mediterranean candidates. We’d visited a couple of times before (for our first European trip [and first bike trip] in 2002, and then the Slow Roll in 2021), so we knew we’d like the area.

In evaluating potential South of France home base candidates for WolfeStreetTravel, we had several criteria (all of which reflected core characteristics of Old Town, Alexandria, the most charming and livable town in the world, as far as we’re concerned):

Medium-sized (we don’t like big cities and prefer more accessible, less intimidating towns that nonetheless offer all of the attractions of their bigger cousins); the population of Alexandria is 160,000 and 12,000 live in Old Town
Restaurant density that “punches above the town’s weight” in the parlance of one of our AI assistants; Old Town Alexandria is densely packed with restaurants due to the proximity to DC and now National Harbor in Maryland, with the associated tourists
Close to a major transportation hub, to enable seamless travel to other European locations (this is also why Spain, Italy, and Croatia were less attractive candidates than France, which is more centrally located for travel to Portugal, Sweden, and Greece, for example, with relatively similar distances); Alexandria is 10 minutes from DCA and 40 minutes to IAD
On a river or lake, providing both atmosphere and water-based activities; Alexandria’s Potomac riverfront plays a major role in our day-to-day at home
Good running paths / routes; we run every day at home, and if we are going to spend extensive time in a European town, we want the same running access, so we don’t fatten up on wine and cheese

Using these criteria, we identified three towns in Provence: Aix-en-Provence, Sommieres, and Vienne. Aix has a reputation as a medium-sized vibrant and charming town very much like Old Town (albeit not on a water body) and both Sommieres and Vienne were located on the Rhone River. After further consideration, we dropped Sommieres from the list as too small, but then added Annency in France’s Savoy region, due to its canals and lakefront location, even though it wasn’t strictly in the Mediterranean cultural belt of the South of France. (We found out about Antibes, Cassis, and Menton on the French coast too late to be included in this evaluation, but Antibes, in particular, is now on our radar for future exploration.)

The final route for the French leg:

We’d fly into Marseille airport, grab a car, and spend 5 days in Aix, 1 day in Vienne (it seemed less and less appealing, the more we looked into it), and 4 days in Annecy.

Aix-en-Provence was exactly as we envisioned, with honeyed limestone facades and an charming centre ville:

But, as the “city of fountains,” we were disappointed – an ongoing drought shut almost all of them down (and they were everywhere):

The big event during our stay was market day on Saturday. Half the town turned into a market place:

The locals were all out stocking up on groceries for the week ahead.

We followed suit. . .

Alfresco dining throughout our stay.

And it wouldn’t be WolfeStreetTravel if there’s not some cool (ideally medieval) history. To wit: The early 6th century Baptistery of Saint-Sauveur Cathedral, built when Aix was transitioning from the Roman world to Christianity – the oldest surviving baptistry in France. Several of the columns are reused from the Roman forum in this location.

And Aperols each evening in a pretty cool AirBnB (the Chief Adventure Officer’s rule of thumb is to book AirBnBs for stays of 5 days or more and also every 10-14 days of hotels for laundry).

After those 5 days, it was time to move north; Aix was beautiful but, we decided, very much one note. We’re glad we visited, but this wasn’t the home base for us.

Vienne, just south of Lyon on the Rhone, offered the next potential home base location. According to our AI buddies, Claude and Chatty G, Vienne’s river utilization included a promenade along the Rhone. This was a lie. It did not.

It did have some pretty awesome Roman artifacts, dating to Vienne’s time as an extraordinarily wealthy Roman trading city. This includes the 1st century BC Roman temple dedicated to Emperor Augustus and his wife Livia, right in the middle of town:

And the town’s massive Roman theater, built into a rocky hillside just above town in the 1st century AD:

And, finally (there’s a bunch more, but this is a trip overview post), the 2nd – 3rd century AD Pyramide de Vienne, right next to our hotel. It’s actually the surviving central monument of the spina – the long central barrier – of Vienne’s enormous Roman circus for chariot races:

The hotel’s restaurant served as our only Michelin-starred dinner of the trip.

Meh. Good not great. Our anniversary dinner on Ios later in the trip was much better (as was our first, great, fish dinner on Naxos).

With the Vienne box checked, we roamed northwest to Annecy, which is decidedly NOT the South of France or Mediterranean in lifestyle, culture, cuisine, or architecture. It’s in the Savoy, just 20 minutes away from Geneva. But we kept seeing this place in our Instagram feeds, evaluated it thoroughly as a candidate, and thought highly enough of its potential that it bumped out Sommieres and consumed a day of Vienne time from our draft itinerary.

Good call. This place was awesome. Canals in the city (Annecy is the “Venice of the Alps”) and Lake Annecy just beyond.

12th-century Palais de I’lle in the middle of Annecy’s main canal leading to the river (behind us):

Annecy’s old town is full of 17th- and 18th-century structures and definitely punches above its weight in restaurants (and wine bars, as we’d learn):

During our stay, we’d swim in the lake, drive around it to another small village, and, the pièce de résistance (literally “piece of resistance” per Dave Barry), biking the 25-mile loop around the lake.

Little side trip to Chateau de Menthon-Saint-Bernard after lunch in the charming village of Talloirs.

And for lunch on the one rainy day during our trip, fondue – a Savoyard specialty.

Annecy was amazing. The town hit ALMOST all of the European home base criteria we had established, based on Old Town, Alexandria. Although it fell short in proximity to a travel hub (we did get a nonstop from Lyon to Athens for our next leg, but the Lyon airport cannot be considered a real travel hub, and Geneva’s is not in the EU). It also exuded Savoyard character, not Mediterranean. But Annecy is a four-season town with hiking skiing in the French Alps (Chamonix is about 75 minutes away), complementing its lakeside charm as a summer getaway. So we’ll be back.

More Greek Cyclades Leg

The second WolfeStreetTraveler had planned to retire in August 2022, immediately after which we would travel to Turkey and four Greek Cyclades islands – Paros, Naxos, Folegandros, and Milos. Supercomputing issues related to the worst high-performance computing vendor in the world scuttled this plan, and retirement was postponed to ensure the issues were resolved. The Turkey & Greece trip of 2022 contracted to include just one Cyclades island: Paros. (Which was amazing – still our favorite island.)

To the missing islands of Naxos, Folegandros, and Milos, we added little Ios to our itinerary, simply because it was there:

We would spend 5 days on Naxos, then 3 days on Ios, 3 days on Folegandros, and 4 days on Milos (all determined sort of based on their size). We’d connect from Lyon to Naxos through Athens, then fast ferry from Naxos to Ios to Folegandros to Milos, then fly back to Athens for a bonus leg, renting cars at each stop.

The monumental Portara of Naxos, the start of what was to be a massive temple to Apollo begun in 530 BC. They didn’t get too far, but this baby has been standing for the 2500 years since.

Probably the best single fish dining experience of the trip at Sarris in the middle of Naxos Town.

Sea bass, before and after.

Naxos beaches in the low season were outstanding – water’s still warm, but the crows have abated.

Just as on Paros, some great restaurants right behind the beach for a pretty nice break in the day.

We drove into the middle of the island and up into the mountains to visit the villages of Filoti and Apeiranthos.

Which offered pretty atmospheric doorways.

Pretty OSHA non-compliant doorways.

A 5-day stay meant another AirBnB. Pretty good digs.

Our next stop was Ios, where we spent time immediately after our arrival to stroll around the island’s main town of Chora.

And later celebrated our 28th anniversary on Ios.

Our place had spectacular sunsets every night, elevating aperitivos hour.

Another Greek island, another beach.

Some pretty good fish at a Greek / Japanese fusion place on said beach.

And, since we were reading The Odysseus on this leg of the trip (it was a slog), we visited the purported tomb of Homer (which does not address the dominant theory that he was, in fact, multiple poets conveying the story through oral histories, but a millenia-old island tradition is a millenia-old island tradition, after all).

The tomb was an unmarked pile of rocks. Pretty underwhelming.

But there’s a pretty good view getting there:

Anniversary abode.

Ios was small, but Folegandros even smaller. It’s main town (also Chora – Folegandros is so small it can’t afford to buy a unique name for its main town; it had to borrow Ios’) is dominated by the Church of Panagia, accessed by a serpentine path up a mountain:

From which there is ALSO a pretty good view:

Chora’s Kastro, a remarkably preserved medieval fortified quarter built under Venetian rule to shelter Folegandros from pirates. Many of the town’s residents still live within its walls.

Folegandros had a sort of saddle across the middle of the island, where you could see both sides, so we hiked this one day. Pretty cool.

And also hiked to Agios Nikolaus beach from the larger Agkali beach one day; the island’s mayor wants to discourage tourism build up, and so prohibits organized beach businesses (read: sunbeds and drink orders), so everything’s pretty rustic.

Although lunch in Akgali over that beach was pretty picture perfect.

Also pretty good digs on Folegandros:

Thence to our final island of Milos, where we stayed in the harbor town of Pollonia (which was composed almost entirely of restaurants that formed an arc around most of the harbor.

Our first full day, we hightailed it over to Sarakiniko Beach, home to the limestone cliffs and rocks that create a dramatic shoreline against the Aegean blue.

Cliff diving turned out to be pretty good there.

We hiked up to the castra on top of Milos’ main town of Plaka.

Where we met Cena, a charming solo traveler from North Macedonia (by way of Toronto), waiting at the bottom of the steps for someone to accompany her. Very nice experience!

Cool ass boat trip the next day to Milos’ Kleftiko cliffs.

Where more diving and swimming ensued.

The picturesque fishing villages-cum-guest house community of Klima.

More good digs in Pollonia, where we laid low on our final day, and dove and swam off the rocks into the deep water right outside our place; pretty good setup.

Last evening on Milos.

And then linking up with the Seattles, who were just starting their Greek sailing trip with a leg in northern Greece to visit the clifftop monasteries of Meteora. This was not part of our original itinerary, but we realized that we’d have an overlap, and coordinated to overlap together.

A pretty great addition to the trip. We had not even heard of Meteora before, so the Seattles were adding value all over the place.

The monasteries began in the 14th century when Orthodox monks seeking solitude and protection from political turmoil established hermitages atop the region’s towering sandstone pillars.

We took a bike tour that lasted the entire first full day in the area, and were able to visit four monasteries.

Although we had not heard of Meteora before, we were familiar with one of the monastery’s roles in James Bond’s For Your Eyes Only. . .

The interior of an ancient Greek Orthodox church atop the nearby town of Kalabata, which was built (as so many were) atop a Roman temple to Apollo, and incorporates (as so many did) physical elements of the temple into the Christian church.

Wine tasting the next day 90 minutes north at the Monastery of Agios Nikolaos, where the monks have been making wine for centuries.

After 3 days, the Seattles continued on to Paros and the start of their sailing excursion, while the Old Towns spent an evening in Athens, and checked out the Acropolis museum there. It did not disappoint.

After 4 weeks, 3 legs, and 9 stops, we headed back home to prepare for our next outing. . . farther afield this time.

Categories: Islands, Mainland, More of South of France and More Cyclades, Provence, Savoy | Tags: adventure, Aix, Aix-en-Provence, Annecy, Athens, Europe, Follegandros, Greece, Ios, Meteora, Milos, Naxos, South of France, travel, Vienne | Leave a comment

The Fight Over Who Owns Alexander the Great

Posted on June 19, 2024 by WolfeStreetTravel

Really interesting article in today’s New York Times about North Macedonia’s claim that Alexander is their native son, much to the infuriation of Greece. Historians agree that Alexander (and his father Philip) both originate from the Macedonia region of Greece, south of the country of North Macedonia. But historical realities don’t discourage the nationalistic fervor of the North Macedonians in creating a national identity for themselves.

We encountered all of this during our bike trip through Macedonia and Albania a few years ago, including the presence of oversize statues of Alexander, his father Philip, and a 10th-century Bulgarian king (who also isn’t native to Macedonia).

Greece’s Alexander the Great, prominently displayed during our trip in Skopje, North Macedonia’s capital:

And across the bridge, his father, Philip of Macedon (also not North Macedonian):

One one side of Skopje’s main square squats Samuil, the Tsar of the First Bulgarian Empire from 997 to 1014 (also not North Macedonian, enraging the Bulgarians, as noted in today’s NYT article):

And on the other side, a couple of more recent heros of the Balkan region – maybe Macedonian, maybe Bulgarian. All of this is a little disputed.

Categories: Macedonia | Tags: Alexander the Great, Europe, Greece, Macedonia, North Macedonia, Philip of Macedon, Skopje, travel | 2 Comments

A Prolonged Foray to Europe: Agrigento, Sicily

Posted on June 10, 2023 by WolfeStreetTravel

While our visit to Scala dei Turchi offered a little coastal sideshow during our stay in Agrigento, the Valley of the Temples (Valle dei Templi) provided the main event. We awoke to a pretty good view of our starting monument destination for the day: the Temple of Hera in the near distance.

Valle dei Templi is the site of ancient Akragas (now modern day Agrigento), a Greek colony founded around 582 BC by settlers from Gela and Rhodes that grew to become one of the most prosperous and powerful cities in the ancient Mediterranean world, with a population at its peak that ancient sources suggest may have rivaled Athens itself. The complex preserves seven Doric temples built primarily during the fifth century BC. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997, the Valley of the Temples stands as one of the supreme monuments of Greek civilization outside of Greece itself, embodying the extraordinary cultural and artistic ambition of Magna Graecia — the network of Greek colonies across southern Italy and Sicily — and representing an irreplaceable testament to a moment when this corner of the ancient world was at the very center of Mediterranean civilization.

Getting closer. . .

Closer. . .

This is what we had been gazing at from afar.

The Temple of Hera (or Juno, if you prefer your gods Roman), is not actually a temple to Hera (or Juno). This attribution resulted from a misunderstanding of the location in a Greek text by Pliny the Elder during the much later Roman period.

No correction on the temple’s correct name was evident anywhere, though.

Regardless, the Greek colonists erected the temple in 450 BC, and was sacked and burned in 406 BC during a Carthaginian attack on the Greeks.

The Valley of the Temples is absolutely a misnomer: we’re actually on a ridge.

Partial remains of the city’s 6th-century-BC walls:

Which include early Christian, 2nd-century-AD arcosolium (arched, recessed) tombs carved directly into the walls themselves.

The star of the temple complex in the distance:

The Temple of Concordia is among the best-preserved Greek temples anywhere on earth — its remarkable survival owed largely to its conversion into a Christian church in the sixth century AD. “The temple was. . . dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul by San Gregorio delle Rape, bishop of Agrigento and thus survived the destruction of pagan places of worship. The spaces between the columns were filled with walling, altering its Classical Greek form [we’d see the same thing in dramatic form when we hit Syracusa two stops later]. . . The Christian refurbishments were removed during the restoration of 1785.” (From here.)

But it was built 1100 years before that, between 440 and 430 BC.

Similar to the misnamed Temple of Juno, the temple was associated with Concordia, the Roman goddess of harmony, simply because a Roman-era Latin inscription that included Concordia was found nearby. It was unrelated to the temple, but this trend of blatantly misnaming the monuments here IS related to our growing sense of annoyance.

The Temple of Concordia is considered to be the best preserved Doric temple in the world, after the Parthenon.

WHAT characterizes a Doric temple, you ask? Question answered by a historical marker at the temple:

Yup, no Ionic or Corinthian columns here. Just a delightful density of Dorics.

But the Doric department hasn’t yet departed. Just down the path lies yet another temple.

Behold, the remains of the Temple of Heracles (or Hercules, you Roman). And yet another BS misidentification. This one from another Cicero screed, mentioning a temple dedicated to Hercules not far from the Agrigento forum. But no one is sure that this is the one he was referencing. No worrries! In the apparent expediency of historo-archeology, researchers stuck the moniker on this half stack of columns and called it a day.

Not to content themselves with just misNAMING temples, they (we’re not sure who they is at this point), thought it would be a great idea to reconstruct a temple using pieces from various OTHER temples.

Behold, the Frankenstein Temple of the Dioscuri (Greek for “Sons of Zeus” – the twin deities Castor and Pollux). Luckily, they just contended themselves with building a corner out of mismatched, supersized Legos found on site.

Lots of other pieces lying around, though.

And finally, Atlas Shrugged (and then sat for a bit, and then just lay down for good). This is one of a few massive Atlas statues extant on site from an aborted attempt to build a massive (really massive) Temple of the Olympian Zeus.

In its reclining position, you can’t tell, but this thing is more than 25 feet tall (long in its current orientation).

Here’s another, upright in the Agrigento museum, with a passer by for scale:

Had the Temple of Olympian Zeus been completed, it would have been the largest Greek temple ever constructed, featuring the Atlas’ serving as telamones supporting its entablature:

But, alas, the temple never really got off the ground. Construction commenced around 480 BCE (part of the base is below) after a major victory by Akragas Greeks over the Carthaginians at the Battle of Himera. At the time, Akragas was one of the richest Greek cities in the Mediterranean and the temple would be a statement of Akragas’s wealth and power.

But the Carthaginian invasion of Sicily in 406 BCE put an end to this. Akragas was besieged, many inhabitants fled, the economy collapsed, and monumental construction projects ceased. Leaving just this:

All of this is better viewed from a distance of both time and space from the comfort of our plunge pool at the end of a long day among ruins in the sun:

Our place was too inviting to venture out on either of the nights of our stay. Pretty good decision.

Next up: fast forwarding 2100 years and 90 miles from Agrigento to Modica and the first of our visits to the “Baroque Towns” of Sicily.

Categories: A Prolonged Foray to Europe, Sicily | Tags: Agrigento, Akragas, Carthaginian invasion of Sicily, doric, Europe, Greece, history, Italy, Sicily, Temple of Concordia, Temple of Hera, Temple of Juno, Temple of Olympian Zeus, travel | Leave a comment

Turkey and Back to Greece: Paros Part 1 – Naousa

Posted on September 5, 2022 by WolfeStreetTravel

This, at long last, represents the final tranche of posts for our September 2022 Turkey and Greece trip: a week on the Greek island of Paros in the Cyclades archipelago.

The Turkey and Back to Greece trip, as originally planned, was to be our first post-retirement travel excursion. The second WolfeStreetTraveler would retire in mid-August 2022 (the first had retired the previous year), and then we’d immediately spend a full month on the road – leaving in late August and returning in late September. After a week in Turkey, we’d spend 3 weeks island hopping in the Cyclades:

Paros for 1 week
Milos for 4 days
Folegandros for 3 days
Naxos for 1 week

But a perpetually problematic NOAA weather forecasting supercomputing support contract in the otherwise optimally operating Science & Engineering business run by on of the WolfeStreetTravelers had other plans. The recalcitrant actions of the most uncooperative data center and the most incompetent supercomputing vendor to ever play a role in weather forecasting would require, it turns out, another 6 months to address. So that WolfeStreetTraveler postponed retirement, canceled the Milos / Folegandros / Naxos legs of the trip (for which both the ferry fares and the hotel / AirBnB reservations were refundable, which was a relief), enjoyed the remaining first legs of the trip, then returned to work to dig in for another half year to pound on pernicious program problems.

But that’s okay – a week in Paros was unbelievably great. And we’d get to the other Cyclades islands later (in fact, they were supposed to comprise the second half of a 6-week trip planned later this year, but earthquakes in the area scared us off, so we’re hitting Mallorca and Andalusia instead, which should be pretty great, too). We’ll get back to the remaining Cyclades soon enough.

In Paros, we based ourselves in the town of Naousa at the north end of the island. Although the main city and ferry port on the island, Parika, held some appeal, our research suggested that Naousa offered more of what we were looking for; and we could always day trip to Parika (which we did).

And Naousa was absolutely perfect for us:

Although definitely a tourist town, Naousa still operated as a working fishing port

where the catch of the day would appear on your table for lunch and dinner.

For the entire week, we’d begin each evening with sunset cocktails on the water, then wander into town to find dinner. The best of these, which we’d patronize three evenings during our stay, was called – fittingly enough – Come Back. So we did. Again and again.

And for obvious reasons.

Sunset in Naousa from the Come Back beach:

And thence, into Naousa for some seafood.

Pretty great weather – mostly – during out stay. We did have a day and a half of super windy weather that was part of the normal weather cycle in the Cyclades, but that also was strong enough that it curtailed some activities.

Fishing wasn’t one of them.

Our time on Paros also encompassed our anniversary, which was great.

Pretty good AirBnB digs.

Another evening, another round (or three) of cocktails at Come Back.

And another sunset. Pretty good routine.

A break from fish with some moussaka.

One of the most photographed spots in Naousa, based on our Instagram feed before the trip. Colorful, yes, but empty.

And then night falls:

Another sunset, and our second favorite cocktail spot.

Maybe they should name this place “Also Come Back Here.”

Full moon over Naousa.

Categories: Greece, Islands, Istanbul, Cappadocia, and Paros | Tags: cyclides, Europe, Greece, naousa, paros, travel | Leave a comment

Turkey and Back to Greece: Paros Part 3 – The Final Reckoning (Or, Parikia, a Lighthouse Hike, and the Linguistically Exact Opposite of Paros)

Posted on September 5, 2022 by WolfeStreetTravel

The final post on the Turkey and Back to Greece trip (finally!). And just in the nick of time: we’re hitting the road (and the Adriatic Sea) tomorrow, and so won’t be posting any of the other backlogged trips for a while. These are all the long trips (versus week-long trips that we responsibly posted immediately after getting back from each), and include the following:

Christmas a few months after this trip in the Baltics (and Netherlands)
The first post-retirement, extended trip to Italy, Malta, Normandy, and Portugal during the summer of 2023
A month in French Polynesia and New Zealand later that year
A month in South America in the spring of 2024
2.5-months on the road in New England and Canada during the summer of 2024

We’ll eventually post the detailed content on each of these trips here on WolfeStreetTravel.com; in the meantime, we’ll be posting pics in real time during two upcoming extended trips over the next 5 months @wolfestreettravel on Instagram, if you’re interested.

Back to our final post on Paros. . .

Although we chose not to stay in the largest town on the island (for reasons obvious here), we nonetheless headed to Parikia one day during our stay on Paros as a day trip.

Very cool, bustling burg. With equally cool, wooden-framed bikes to boot.

The absolute most intriguing site in town has to be the Frankish Castle.

Built by the Venetians in the 1200s on the site of the town’s ancient acropolis, the “castle” (actually the remains of a tower that was part of a castle wall) was constructed Jenga-style using the vestiges of classical temples from around the island.

Little remains of the original fortification, and nearby structures incorporate what remains into their own walls.

One of the three “Mavrogenus’ Fountains” found around town. ” Nicolaos Mavrogenus was one of the prodigal sons of Parikia, Paros Island main town in the Greek Cyclades. Missing his native Aegean and as Wallachia governor decided benefit his hometown providing a public drinking water supply [in 1777]: three beautiful marble fountains.” (From here.)

And another (we never came across the third):

Finally getting a gyro at a local place in Parikia’s port (the empty plate would soon be filled):

The Byzantine-era church complex of Panagia Ekatontapiliani (The Church with 100 Doors):

According to tradition, the church currently has 99 doors and a secret, 100th door will open when the church of Hagia Sofia in Constantinople become Orthodox Christian again.

The original church dates back to 326, during the reign of Roman Emperor Constantine, and purportedly was founded by his mother, Helene (whose sarcophagus we came across during the micronations road trip).