 In the confusion, sailors from Bari in Italy seized the relics of Saint Nicholas, over the objections of the monks caring for them, and spirited the remains away to Bari, where they arrived on May 9, 1087, and soon brought that city visitors making pilgrimage to Saint Nicholas.The earliest church of St. Nicholas at Myra was built by the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire in the 6th century.The present-day church was constructed mainly from the 8th century onward for the city's Byzantine Greek inhabitants; a Greek Orthodox monastery was added in the second half of the 11th century.