Agios Nikolaos Orphanos is one of the most important Byzantine paintings. The church, a narrow hall with a Samarian roof and side aisles, was the katholikon (central church) of a monastery built in the second decade of the 14th century. From the old monastery, ruins of the gate of its precinct are preserved. The church was painted in the 1310s by a great artist who worked on other monuments in Thessaloniki and Macedonia. The church of St. Nicholas of Orfanos is a part of the Vlatadon monastery of Thessaloniki, which belongs to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.