Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis: a church and its layers of painting

The explanations distinguish finds, interpretations and open questions. Sources appear at the end of the page.

What the source says

According to the Department of Antiquities, Cyprus page on the church at Kakopetria, the church dates from the 11th century, and the narthex, the vestibule at its front, was added at the beginning of the 12th century. The earliest painting phase is of the 11th century, the latest of 1633. Source 1.

A name and a list

On the UNESCO list of the painted churches in the Troodos region the church appears as "Ayios Nikolaos tis Stegis (St. Nicholas of the Roof), Kakopetria", and the page counts it among the churches in which "important examples of the 11th century iconography survive". Among the features the page describes as specific to Cyprus and "determined by its geography, history and climate", it lists "steep-pitched wooden roofs with flat hooked tiles". The parts of the page read do not explain the church's name. Source 2.

How layers accumulate

More than five hundred years separate the 11th century from 1633. Every painting phase needs a surface: the narthex, added at the beginning of the 12th century, could be painted only from then on, so its paintings, if it has any, cannot belong to the earliest phase. The sources used here give only the first and the last phase and neither list the phases between them nor locate them in the church, so this page does not describe them. Source 1.

Placement on the timeline

The construction in the 11th century, the narthex at the beginning of the 12th and the first painting phase lie within the Byzantine period of the Department of Antiquities table, 965-1191, so the article is placed there. The latest phase, 1633, lies after 1571, the end of the Venetian period with which the site's scheme for Cyprus ends, and so has no period here. Sources 3, 1.

Scope of reading: the UNESCO page on the painted churches in the Troodos was read on 24 October 2026, in short quotations. The Department of Antiquities pages cited here could not be opened for checking on 24 October 2026; the details from them follow notes taken from those pages at an earlier stage and were not re-checked. Research publications on the paintings were not read.