By Nicolas Bard

The Church of St. Andrew Patras is a Christian basilica, built on the west side of the center of Patras. Together with the adjacent old church of St. Andrew they are one of the most important pilgrimages of Western Greece, with a large number of believers flocking there from both our country and from around the world. The temple, as it is easily understood, is dedicated to the first Apostle of Christ, Saint Andrew.

The construction of this imposing temple began in the distant 1908 under the supervision of architect Anastasios Metaxas and was inaugurated 66 years later, in 1974. The designs of the Temple was initially submitted to the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts (1904), which was appointed by the design of the French Emil Robert. Four years later the temple was founded by the king of the Greeks George I. Above the central dome, whose erection began only in 1934, there is a 5 -meter gold -plated cross, and there are 12 smaller crosses in the other domes. These crosses symbolize Jesus and his apostles. The interior of the temple is decorated with Byzantine frescoes (1985) and remarkable mosaics.

This temple is regarded as the largest Orthodox church in Greece and one of the largest in the Balkans. There is, however, another view that claims to be the second largest, after the church of St. Panteleimon Acharnes in Athens. Whatever the point of view, the only sure thing is that it wins the visitor’s gaze from far away, and captures with imposing architecture, high height and 13 in its total domes.

Inside the temple are the sacred relics of the Apostle Andrew. These consist of the little finger, part of the upper part of the Apostle’s skull, and small parts of the cross in which it witnessed, all placed in a special relic. The Holy Scenes of the Apostle was given to the Temple by the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome in September 1964, under the direction of Pope Paul II. Cardinal Bea was the leader of a group of 15 cardinals, who handed over the relics to the Metropolitan of Patras, Constantine on September 24, 1964. A large number of believers and many metropolitans participated in the Reception Ceremony. After ritually on the streets of the city, the relic was placed in a special silver womb inside the temple.

But let’s look at this architectural elegance in numbers. The temple has a large, central dome and twelve smaller ones, symbolizing, as we have said, Jesus Christ and the 12 Apostles. Also, there is a huge fresco of the Virgin Mary of 220 sq.m. depicting Megalochari having in her arms the whole city of Patras, including the church of St. Andrew. The central dome of the temple is 40.5 meters high and the cross located above it is 5 meters high, making it visible from far away, while the central building has a capacity of 7,500 people! The Church of St. Andrew now counts for more than 50 years of operation and is being visited by more than 120,000 visitors from Greece and abroad, so it is justifiably a lighthouse of Orthodoxy and a trademark of the city.