The Monastery of Lips was a complex of two connecting churches. The first one of which (North church) was restored by the patrician Konstantinos Lips from a sixth-century church (Macridy, Theodore. ‘The Monastery of Lips and the Burials of the Palaeologi’. Dumbarton Oaks Papers 18. 1964: 258) and consecrated to the Theotokos (Mother of God) in June 907. Nothing is known about the monastery or the church until the very late thirteenth century, when Theodora Palaiologina, widow of Michael VIII, restored and expanded the monastery, adding the second religious building (South church), dedicated to the Prodromos (St. John the Forerunner) and intended as mausoleum for herself and the family of Palaeologi.