Church of Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis

The church of Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis belongs to the type of cruciform temple with a dome. To the east, it ends in a semicircular inner arch and a three-sided outer arch. It was originally built without a support. There's only one entrance in the middle of the west wall. The semicircle blind arch above the entrance is decorated with Phialostomia.

Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis, near the mountainous Kakopetria, is the only remnant of an old monastery. As it can be seen from the church, the monastery was founded in the 11th century. However, there is no relevant information. The ceramic decoration of the church connects it with Constantinople and the Hellene area in general. The monastery seems to have been in some prosperity, both during the Middle Byzantine period and during the Frankish occupation, judging by the repeated decorations of the church with frescoes and the dedication to it, of the great icon of Saint Nicholas, in the late 13 th century by a Frank knight. The monastery seems to have had already declined in the 17th century and at the end of this century it was destroyed. When  the Russian monk Vasily Barsky visited it in 1735, he met monks there. Later, the monastery's estates were rented to clergy and in the late 19th century, to lay people.

At the end of the 12 th or beginning of the 13 th century, the church of Agios Nikolaos was covered with a second two-pointed roof, which hides the original cross arrangement of the cupolas and the dome. This second roof with the hooked tiles gave the name to Agios Nikolaos tis Stegis, as early as the 13th century, as the inscription in the icon of Agios Nikolaos shows.