Church of the Dormition of Virgin Mary (Old Cathedral)

From the Byzantine period of Edessa, only two temples survive in the traditional settlement of Varosi. One of them is the Old Catholic Church, which today is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin, dating to the second half of the 14th century, shortly before the occupation of the city by the Ottomans. The original name of the church was Agia Sophia, but it was renamed to avoid its conversion into a mosque during the Turkish occupation.

The church is built on the ruins of an earlier church, as revealed by the ornate capitals with reliefs of the 5th century. Its type is a three-aisled wooden-roofed basilica with an elevated central aisle and is decorated with two layers of important frescoes, initially of the 14th and then of the 17th century. In the middle of the 18th century, the painter Apostolos Loggianos Vodeniotis painted a gilded, wood-carved iconostasis of special artistic value.