Located at Syggrou Avenue, on the neighbourhood of Neos Kosmos, Agios Sostis is a rather special church, due to its interesting history which is interwoven with King George I of Greece.
Copenhagen born King George I of Greece.
The church was erected in thanksgiving for the miraculous rescue of King George I of Greece, who faced down an assassination attempt on 14th February 1898. Returning from a trip to the beach at Phaleron in an open carriage, George and his daughter Maria were shot at by two riflemen. The King tried to shield his daughter; both were unhurt though the coachman and a horse were wounded. The gunmen fled into the Hymettus hills but they were spotted and arrested - eventually both were beheaded two months later.
The assassination attempt on King George.
The church which was erected during 1901-3 was originally built for commercial purposes. It was first constructed in 1898 to serve as Greece’s pavilion for the Exposition Universelle de 1900, a world’s fair held in Paris in November of 1900. Each country participated in the exhibition with a separate pavilion which represented a characteristic monument or building.
The design of the Greek pavilion was assigned to the French architect Lucien Magne and it took the form of a Byzantine church.
When the exhibition was over most of the pavilions were demolished, but some were dismantled and transported back home. That was the case with the Greek one as - after getting dismantled- it was shipped to Athens by the initiative of the city’s mayor, Spyros Mercouris. Subsequently the municipal council decided to reconstruct the Greek pavilion as a temple of Christ the Saviour, on the location where the assassination attempt on King George took place.
The Greek, next to the Serbian pavilion,
in Exposition Universelle.
Last but not least, Agios Sostis Church is easily accessible by Metro (Syggrou-Fix Station).