Helen Wyatt — Mapping Chora

The citadel of Chora

 Vast and yet intimate. 

The vista itself is a map in soil and rock. This map records a community’s migration off the mountain towards the port for security and economic reasons. The mountains maybe ‘grimly indifferent’ but the structures on the mountain are human toiled yet now ‘dead’. They are almost indecipherable from the mountain except with careful looking.

The dwellings below form their own mountains - built from the same hard materials as the real thing.

Located as a safe haven amid fortifications, incorporating fragments of Hellenistic columns in their structures they contribute a spiritual inheritance from 1700 years before. A circular use of building materials.

The citadel still throws up some life for human use.

The crumbling Byzantine-era structures hold places for religious instruction and communion. Those little chapels are cool, quiet and for 500 years have offered visitors an intimate space. No grand cathedrals up here just quiet contemplation of finely painted frescoes that express lyrically, and with serenity, the story of St George. How magical it would be to see them by candlelight (or by lit flowers instead of wicks). Protected by plaster, the paintings are shedding their skin. 

Life isn’t contained within though. Outside wild oregano, repellant bush, candle flower, incense scrub  and a tea weed grow everywhere and the scent is intense.