The Olive Museum of Paxos occupies an old stone press of the eighteenth century, just outside Magazia. Here you can follow the whole process by which the island turned its one crop into money: the crushing of the fruit under the stone, the pressing, the separation of the oil. Paxos lived from this. By the 1920s roughly half the surface Read more...

The Holy Apostles, Peter and Paul, are the patron saints of Gaios, and this is their church. It belongs to the Tranakas and Youlios families and appears in the catalogue of 1686. Its iconostasis and the despotic icons were painted in 1714 by two craftsmen from Ioannina, Antonis Nomikos and Nikolaos Chorafas, for the price of fourteen reals. Among the Read more...

From Bogdanatika, by the road that runs beside the church of Agia Paraskevi, a narrow but easy path sets off westwards. It is short and pleasant walking. It passes first between drystone walls and the yards of old houses and newer villas, then out into the olive groves, and as it climbs the soil gives way to bare limestone. Part Read more...

A short path leads out to one of the steepest cliffs on Paxos, some forty-five metres above the sea, on the west coast. The whole west side of the island is built this way: the rock lies in horizontal beds, and the sea has cut into them to make caves one above the other. A nineteenth-century description of the Mousmouli Read more...

Just opposite the road the leads to Avlaki and following the stone-build path in front of you lies the cistern “Sterna Eliniki”, dating from the Venetian period. The cistern is build on the edge of the natural rock formation and is of circular shape. Water is still collected today from the paved surface that slopes towards the center. During the Read more...

On the north side of Gaios harbour stands the largest public building the island ever had: the Venetian governor’s residence, which under the British Protectorate became the English Governorate. Paxos was administered from here. In the nineteenth century the island had its own governor, answerable to the prefect of Corfu, and a visitor in the 1880s noted the governor’s great Read more...

Agios Spiridon stands on the islet of Kaltsonisi, off the south coast. It belonged to Jorjis Anemogiannis, appears in the catalogue of 1686 and was restored in 1750. Its bell carries the date 1805. The church has a part in the story of how the Panagia of the Vellianites came to Paxos. In 1686 the icon of the Virgin that Read more...

At the edge of Loggos beach, beside the old primary school, stands the largest industrial building on Paxos: the Anemogiannis factory, with its chimney of twenty-four metres. The Anemogiannis family bought the plot in 1874 and the brothers Stefanos and Ioannis began with an olive press. After Stefanos died in 1910 his son Spyros enlarged it into a works that Read more...

The cistern of the Holy Apostles was begun in 1825 and completed in 1846, the date cut into the paving of its catchment surface. The decorative pillars were added in 1848, and the approach was finished in 1851, according to the Book of the Elders of Paxos. It is without question the most elaborate cistern on the island and one Read more...

George Anemogiannis was born on Paxos in 1798. When the Greek Revolution broke out in 1821 he was serving as a sailor on a ship belonging to Laskarina Bouboulina, under captain N. Orlof. He was engaged to be married; the wedding was set for that June. On 10 June 1821, off Nafpaktos, he volunteered to steer a fire ship against Read more...

The cistern of the Holy Anargyroi was designed and begun in the Napoleonic period. Work stopped for several years, resumed in 1818 under British rule and finished in 1821; a local newspaper records a rebuilding in 1861. It was the first large public cistern on Paxos, and on its own it held enough water for Gaios. The tank is cylindrical, Read more...

The monastery of the Panagia stands on the small island at the mouth of Gaios harbour. Everyone on Paxos calls it simply the Madonna. The present church appears to have been built over an early Christian one. The catalogue of 1686 records it as old and ruined; it was probably restored by the Vellianitis family, and in 1720 it became Read more...

The windmill known as the Mill of Lesianitis stands at Tranakatika, just outside Gaios, on a spur crowned by the building itself. It is round, built of stone, with an internal stone stair and four windows set symmetrically at the top. It stands on a base twice its own diameter. It was raised in about 1780, which makes it one Read more...

The Venetian castle of Paxos,   now known as the castle of Saint Nicholas, began been built in 1423 and was completed in 1510.   Built on top of the homonymous natural island opposite Gaios, it was constructed by the Venetian Baron of the island Adam II San Hipolito as a measure of protection from pirates and Ottomans.   According to a research by an Italian Read more...

Hidden in a green valley above Lakka, in the hamlet of Grammatikeika, stands the church that most people on Paxos will send you to first: the Ypapanti, the Presentation of Christ. It was built in 1601 by two brothers, Adam and Vasilis San Ippolito, and it is the only church on the island in the Byzantine manner, with two domes. Read more...

On the south-eastern cape of Antipaxos, Ovoros or Novara, stands the youngest of the three lighthouses. It was built in 1906 by the Greek state. When Salvator toured Antipaxos in 1885 there was nothing here but rock and reefs. The light was needed for the dangerous water around the Daskalies islets, where at the end of the nineteenth century fishermen Read more...

On the islet of Panaghia, at the entrance to the harbour of Gaios, the lighthouse shares its ground with the monastery of the Panagia. The light here is older than the lighthouse itself: from 1776 onwards the monks kept a lantern burning to warn ships away. The islanders knew why, for vessels had been lost on the reef in front Read more...

At the northern tip of Paxos, above the sheer cliffs that look across to Corfu, stands one of the most historic lighthouses of the Ionian. The first light was lit here in 1825, under British protection, burning olive oil behind fixed parabolic mirrors, and it guided ships through the channel between southern Corfu and Paxos. Its mechanism was improved twice, Read more...

Agios Ioannis stands on the islet of Agios Nikolaos, opposite Gaios, and belongs to the Kourniachtis and Vellianitis families. It is included in the list of 1805. Two churches on one small rock, inside a Venetian fortress, is a good measure of how the island worked: the families who owned land also owned churches, and where they had interests they Read more...

Agia Marina stands at Porto Ozias, at the end of the coast road before the turn for Mogonisi. It is one of the two early Christian basilicas of Paxos, built in about the sixth century, and the area of Ozias is held to be the oldest settled part of the island. The catalogue of 1686 already lists it among the Read more...