The Faceless Icon of Mystras

The Byzantine ghost city of Mystras, perched on a spur of Mount Taygetos near Sparta, was the last capital of the Byzantine Empire before the Ottoman conquest of 1460. In the Peribleptos Monastery, one of the best-preserved churches in the complex, there is an icon in the south apse that has puzzled art historians for decades: it depicts a standing figure in imperial robes, but the face has been removed — not vandalized or painted over, but the original plaster is simply absent, leaving raw stone beneath.

No historical record explains the removal. Art restorers who examined the icon in the 1970s noted that the absence was ancient — pre-Ottoman, meaning the face was removed during the Byzantine period itself. Local tradition says the icon depicted the Emperor Constantine XI Palaiologos, last emperor of Byzantium, and that he himself ordered his face removed from the icon on the night before Mystras fell, so that he would not be captured in effigy. Visitors to the church report that when standing before the faceless icon, they briefly feel they are being watched — and that the feeling comes from the empty stone where the face should be.