Chapel of Saint Mamas

Feast day: September 2

The chapel of saint Mamas is located to the northwest of the church of the Holy Cross, in the nucleus of the settlement of Pano Lefkara, and there is evidence of an inscription dating the construction of the church to 900.

A reference to the church exists also in the Codex of Lefkara, where the renovation works of 1780 are mentioned: “Even by order of (sir Meletios), the church of saint Mamas was renovated since it was also wrecked and was used as a stable for pigs and this since the time of Kara Mustafa Pashia. The walls underwent renovation, the superstructure and the doors and outside the fence and the expenses were paid by the church of the Holy Cross and the amount was up to three hundred gross; when members of the ecclesiastical committee were hieromonk Makarios and Christophis”.

The chapel belongs to the type of the compressed cross-in-square church, with an extended western wing, possibly because of its antiquity and its relationship to transitional polystyle variants of the same category, if not the result of a later extension. It is 11.10 m long, excluding the extending arch, and 3.82 m wide. The later layers of plaster have covered the elements which could help to identify the different phases of the chapel; it could be dated based on the typology of the arches and the vaults, to the 13th century. Irregularities, observed in the case of these arches, may be due to their reconstruction, and thus a much older phase could be assumed. The chapel is a listed monument (Table B) and celebrates on September 2.