This Monastery of the Mother of God was founded by the patrician Konstantinos Lips and inaugurated in 907. We do not know how whether it still was flourishing in 1200. It certainly decayed in the time of the crusaders after 1204, since it was a ruin at the time when the Greeks reconquered Byzantium in 1261. When the building was restored around 1300, a second church was added to the old one on the south side, and both churches still exist, though badly damaged and restored. The picture shows only the first church in the form reconstructed by A. Megaw with minor alterations.