This is the Rotunda in…

This is the Rotunda in Thessaloniki that I promised to post about when I posted about the Arch of Galerius. It is currently a Greek Orthodox church dedicated to St. George. It was completed in 309 CE at the same time as the arch probably, but not absolutely certainly, intended as a mausoleum for Galerius and was connected to the arch with a colonnaded road that continued to the Galerius’ palace. Its architecture is reminiscent of the much larger Pantheon in Rome. Personally I get the sense that it may have been intended both as a mausoleum and a temple to multiple Roman gods. Galerius, at least at the time when this was started, which was when he was elevated from Caesar to Augustus in the Tetrarchy, was vehemently anti-Christian (more on that whenever I get around to the Church of St. Demetrius) and effectively deifying himself in a pagan temple seems on-brand from what I have gleaned. Late in the 4th century, Emperor Theodosius I ordered it converted to a Christian church and it was dedicated to the Archangels. After Thessaloniki fell to the Ottomans it was converted to a mosque, but was converted back to a church in 1912 when the Ottoman Empire lost it to the Greeks.