The Monastery of the 40 Saints

The Monastery of the 40 Saints is located east of the city of Saranda on top of the Sixth Hill in its most dominant part. The monastery belongs to the Late Antiquity period Cen.VI. Its dimensions are 40 m long x 24 m wide. The monastery has been built and rebuilt over hundreds of years. The above-ground floor consists of the great hall, the church with seven apses and two narthexes, three large doors and two rows of windows were built on the façade. On the ground floor or crypt are preserved galleries (vaults), vaulted galleries, double vaults, frescoes of the Byzantine period, water cisterns and tombs. Today, the basement is in somewhat good condition and the ground floor was severely damaged during World War II by the bombing of British aircraft. There is a need for consolidation-restoration intervention. The basilica inside has a unique plan, it is a seven-concave, with three columns in each nave and an apse protruding from the eastern façade. The construction with this planimeter would have had a magnificent cross-vaulted roof, supported by half-domes of seven apses. Two narthexes or courtyards are on the west and south sides of the building. These were both arcade corridors with loggias in the fund of each offering the panorama of the bay of Saranda and the Strait of Corfu. The use of the double arch is made of stones worked in the same way as if they were bricks. At the entrance to the longitudinal underground space covered with a unique vault, under the large outer vault are incorporated two overlapping vaulted catacombs on two floors, where the lower one serves to enter the underground basilica.