Materials of Construction

Materials that were readily available for residential and ecclesiastical construction included rubble, ashlar, and fieldstone. Porus or psorite, a rock easily tooled and available on the shore in the immediate area, was used for edging, ornamentation, cornices, arches, corbels, and for moldings around windows, doors and niches. Porus, however, weathered more quickly than other kinds of stone; details made of this material are therefore often no longer identifiable. It is doubtful that the builders themselves quarried the marble that they occasionally used. Rather, they probably took the marble from nearby antique sanctuaries, and then either retooled it or else used it unchanged. One can still find in Monemvasia many antique marble pieces in their original form. For example a doric capital can be seen on the terrace of a reconstructed house, and some of the slabs that make up the steps before the church of Christo Elkomenos are certainly from antique remains. It is difficult to tell whether the many marble pieces in Byzantine churches were especially quarried for the churches, or wether they were taken from ancient structures and reworked. In any case, it seems that at the beginning of the sixteenth century the reuse of antique marbles for building materials came to an end, thanks to the intervention of the Venetian podestà in 1527. Those churches constructed during the second Venetian period (1690 — 1715) have only porus rather than marble ornamentation. One exception, however, is the foundation charter of the church of Hagios Nicholaos, which was beautifully chiseled in marble.

The Turks especially liked to build with wood. But lumber was also used in the building of the Hagia Sophia, and the old wooden beams are still in their original places.
Mortar was used for laying bricks and stones, and for sealing cisterns. The water resistant Byzantine mortar, recognized by its reddish color, was used especially for cistern. The Turks made use of stucco decorated with small pieces of broken tiles; this helped prevent cracks from developing, and thus made the larger surfaces more weather resistant (see the traces of plaster to the left of the corbeling in plate 6).

Fired clay was employed in Monemvasia for brickwork, for ornamental masonry, and for roofing tile. Nowadays fired clay is used only for roofs. Byzantine builders seem to have been the only ones who used bricks and ornamental masonry. At the Hagia Sophia, for example, one finds tiles between each course of the masonry, and between each of the vertical joints. The windows of the Hagia Sophia demonstrate the ability of the Byzantine architects to use brick in ever new ways for purpose of decoration. The demi columns of the drum and the ledge of the Hagia Sophia also demonstrate the decorative uses of bricks. The dome, too, was built of bricks. Finally, the cloister that used to stand next to the Hagia Sophia had ribbed groin vaults made of brickwork.

The old roofs in Monemvasia were made of pan tiling (or ridge and furrow tiling). They consisted of large, curved tiles, arranged in rows side by side with the concave side up, forming drain gutters. The spaces between these rows were then covered with tiles laid with the convex side up. The bottom layer is called the gutter tile or imbrex (known also as "nuns"), the top layer is called the covering tile or tegula (known also as "monks"). Ancient architects used this principle of tiling when designing marble roofs for antique temples, and today the same method of tiling can be seen on peasant houses around Monemvasia.

Some houses with new roofs have flat crown tiles, or new curved tiles that are smaller and stronger. The State Archeological Service, however, has prohibited the use of these new tiles for reconstruction in the lower town. Thus nowadays it is necessary to go out to the surrounding villages to buy old style tiles for use in reconstructing houses in the lower town.

In general one can say that the houses still visible today seldom made use of brickwork; builders always preferred rubble for putting up houses and walls, even though this form of construction required the use of much more mortar.