Church of St Spyridon, Nafplio

The Church of St Spyridon, Nafplio, stands at the intersection of public history and private memory. Its bullet-marked wall recalls an assassination in the early nineteenth century, while its doorway becomes the destination of Akis Adamakos’s recurring Saturday ritual and, after twenty-five years, the setting for his return inside.

Setting and Historical Association

The church stands above a narrow street reached by a staircase in Nafplio. A bullet from the assassination of the first head of the new state remains embedded in the church wall. The killing followed the arrest of members of a rebellious Maniot clan: two relatives waited for the head of state as he was going to church, and, after a first shot missed, stabbed him; a second bullet struck his head. The assassins were executed shortly afterwards. In the narrator’s conversation in Nafplio, the visible bullet makes that history tangible and becomes a warning about blood feuds that have endured into modern times.

A Landmark in Akis’s Memory

For Akis Adamakos, the church is bound to the afternoon twenty-five years earlier when he arrived outside it in a shiny grey wedding suit, nervous and ready to give his bride a bouquet. Family and friends had gathered there in large numbers, including people who had travelled from the southern tip of the Mani. The wedding’s crowded street and open exchange of news stand in sharp contrast to Akis’s later solitude in the square.

Every Saturday, between four and six, Akis sits alone at a café in Platia Syntagmatos and looks toward the church. His precisely observed two-hour ritual returns him to the wedding afternoon. The church’s staircase is thus not merely part of the cityscape: it is the visible route into a memory he repeatedly revisits.

Return and Narrative Significance

After following a boy in a silvery suit toward the church, Akis reaches the stairs but initially sees no sign of him. He passes the bullet-hole in the wall and enters for the first time in twenty-five years. Inside, dark icons cover the walls; at the altar, a cross rests above a golden skull and crossed bones. Akis turns and sees the boy in the shadows. The child opens the door, his suit briefly lit by the light outside, and disappears; when Akis reaches the street, the boy is gone.

The church gathers the story’s separate strands into one place: the remembered wedding, the city’s record of political violence, and Akis’s encounter with the elusive child. Its bullet-marked threshold leads from the public street into a solemn interior, making Akis’s return a passage through both history and personal memory.