St. Nicholas Church – Vevi

In the settlement of today’s Vevi, known as Banitsa from the Ottoman tax lists of 1481 until its renaming in 1926, in the village cemetery there is a small one-room church that commemorates the memory of St. Nicholas. According to two cadastral inscriptions, it was erected in 1460 as a catholic monastery by the priest Doukas and his wife, priestess Kali and his son, also priest Nicholas and his wife, priestess Armenka.
The construction of the building testifies to its immediate completion with signs, however, of the memory of particular luxury in places where ceramic decorations survive.
Despite its hasty construction, it also hosts extremely important fresco decoration on the exterior above the arches of the entrance and the window. The frescoes are classified as one of the most important fresco sets of the wider Balkan region for the area and, if the monuments of the Prespes region are excluded, it is the only existing post-Byzantine monument without earlier or later counterparts for the rest of the prefecture of Florina until the late 18th century.
The iconographic choices with particular emphasis on the highlighting of snapshots from the circle of Judas, the technical excellence and the evidence of theological knowledge describe an important hagiographer – artist of the monument. Of particular interest are the funerary crosses that survive in the cemetery surrounding the temple.

SOURCE: Archaeological Museum of Florina