In a mountainous area of the small town of Petrousa (Pleynas), in the P.E. of Drama, in the southern foothills of Mount Falacro, between the straits of Pyrgon-Petrousa and Granitis, there is a karst cave dedicated, according to the testimonies of the locals, to the memory of Saint Mark. From its entrance you can see almost the entire plain of Drama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In front of the cave there are remains of an elongated gate wall, the masonry of which dates back to the 11th century, while on the slope there are foundations of houses, fragments of horns, abafis and glazed pottery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Inside the cave, in the first and largest room, which is adequately lit by natural light due to the collapse of a large part of the ceiling, there are two tanks. The water collected in one of them is taken as holy water by the pilgrims. Natural stalagmite ‘walls’ and ‘columns’ were used to construct these tanks, together with stone walls lined with hydraulic mortar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the same room, the ruins of a church, which bore an icon, dedicated to the Virgin Mary of the Cave, as at least one of the dozens of engravings within the cave testifies. Of the ruins of the temple, only part of the semicircular eastern niche and the outer walls are visible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To the south of the first, a second hall with an E-W development orientation opens up. On its western walls are preserved acidographs, in the form of dedicatory-epigraphic inscriptions of the 11th-12th centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The invocations are generally unorthographically written and follow fixed greek patterns of the form “+Lord have mercy on thy servant”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many post-Byzantine inscriptions can be seen in the same section. Few of them belong to the 15th to 17th centuries, while those of the 18th and 19th centuries predominate. In the late 19th century and the first three decades of the 20th century, inscriptions in Cyrillic script also appear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today, the cave is visited by pilgrims from the surrounding area on April 25 or on the Tuesday of the Feast of the Epiphany, if April 25 is included in Holy Week, singing the Christ Resurrected, the Saint’s Troparion and other resurrection hymns, practices that probably refer to the survival of ancient customs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The cave is not open to visitors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a mountainous area of the small town of Petrousa (Pleynas), in the P.E. of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11980,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"jetpack-portfolio-type":[],"jetpack-portfolio-tag":[],"class_list":["post-11995","jetpack-portfolio","type-jetpack-portfolio","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n