Agia Paraskevi is the church of Zenempisatika, a village of seventeen families in the survey of 1885, which belonged to the district of Vellianitatika. At the foot of its porch sits a stone cut with the year 1700, which puts it among the oldest dated churches on Paxos. The bell gable is a double arch carrying two bells, with an Read more...

A church at Bogdanatika, above Gaios, a little under two hundred metres from Agia Paraskevi. We are recording it under the name the open map data gives it, the Panagia, because we have not been able to confirm a fuller name on the ground. There is a good chance that this is the chapel of the Panagia of Koutroubalis, which Read more...

A church above Loggos, a little inland from the harbour. We record it as the Zoodochos Pigi, the Life-Giving Spring, and the reasoning is worth stating. The Zoodochos Pigi of Loggos is known from the old accounts as a dependency of the Ypapanti: after Easter the icon came down from Grammatikeika to Lakka, then on the Friday of the Life-Giving Read more...

A small church above the harbour of Lakka, reached by a flight of twenty-five steps. The climb is the point: from the top you look straight out through the mouth of the bay. In the survey of 1885 the harbour of Lakka, then five people, is listed with two churches, Agios Ioannis and Agios Andreas, this one and the parish Read more...

Agios Andreas is the parish church of Lakka, and by local tradition the oldest church on Paxos. A visitor who recorded it in the 1880s was told exactly that, and noted two details on the front: a stone shaped like a cannon set into the facade, and two carved fish, because, as they told him, the saint was a fisherman. Read more...

A small church on the rocks at the northern edge of Gaios, by the old quarantine station. A visitor in the 1880s called it the most picturesque thing on that shore: set directly on the rock, with a portico of four columns and wall paintings on the iconostasis. It is a private chapel of the Kouvas family, and it is Read more...

The Holy Trinity is the parish church of Gaios and the largest church in the town. It was the new church. In the 1880s it was still unfinished: a visitor of the time calls it the newest and biggest of Gaios and notes its bell tower painted white and blue, and it was built to take over from the Ascension Read more...

Another of the churches of Agios Spiridon, in the centre of the island between Gaios and Magazia. The old registers list churches of this saint at Kokkinatika, dated 1793, and at Mitsialatika in Magazia, dated 1844, besides the ones at Argyratika and on Kaltsonisi. We have not yet established which of those entries belongs to this building. If you know Read more...

A church of Agios Spiridon above Gaios, in the Vlachopoulatika district, not far from the Eleousa and from Agios Charalambos. Agios Spiridon is the patron of Corfu, and Paxos, which was administered from Corfu for most of its history, took him up with enthusiasm: there are churches of his at Argyratika, at Kokkinatika, at Mitsialatika in Magazia and on the Read more...

A church of the Entry of the Virgin into the Temple, above Gaios. The same dedication appears inside the Eleousa at Vlachopoulatika, where the right-hand altar is given to the Eisodia, a reminder that on Paxos a feast could have both its own church and a side altar elsewhere, depending on which family wanted it. Feast day: 21 November. Read more...

Agios Georgios stands on a raised circular paved terrace at Vellianitatika, and its tall campanile stands apart from the church, which is unusual on Paxos. The large side door is worked in what a nineteenth century visitor called the manner of the Renaissance. Inside there is a wooden ceiling, a raised presbytery behind a wooden rail, and a double galleried Read more...

Agios Demetrios is the church of Linaratika, above Gaios. In the survey of 1885 the hamlet, then six people, is listed under his name. Linaratika was a quarrying village. A visitor of that time describes nine houses on the edge of a high hill above the valley of Stefos, where the men cut angular blocks and flagstones and carried them Read more...

Agios Ioannis at Bastatika is known as the Agios Ioannis of the Oregano, for the hillside it stands on. The reason to walk up is the view. From here the whole southern half of Paxos opens out, with Antipaxos beyond it, one of the widest prospects on the island, and quite different from the sunset viewpoints of the west coast, Read more...

Agios Athanasios stands between Kalodikatika and Mitsialatika, in the middle of the island. The building carries the date 1837, read on it in the nineteenth century, one of the later of the dated village churches, from the years of the British Protectorate rather than the Venetian centuries that produced most of the others. Feast day: 18 January. Read more...

Agios Spiridon at Argyratika, on the Lakka side of the island. In the survey of 1885 the hamlet of Argyratika, then ten families, is listed under his name. A visitor of the 1880s described it. The sanctuary projects plainly at the back, pierced by a cross-shaped opening with one arched window on either side. The door is a Renaissance arch Read more...

One of the two churches of Fountana, standing a few dozen metres from the Panagia Vlacherna. The parish of Magazia and Fountana counts both, and visitors regularly take one for the other. We record this one as the Estavromenos, the church of the Crucified. The identification is ours, based on the position of the two buildings and on the parish Read more...

The church of the Taxiarches, the Archangels, at Magazia. Its iconostasis is named among the notable ones of Paxos, in the same company as the Holy Apostles of Gaios, the Vlacheraina of Fountana and the Holy Apostles of Boikatika. On an island whose churches are mostly plain, the iconostasis was where the money and the skill went. In the survey Read more...

The Evangelistria is the church of Kouriteika, a hamlet of eight people in the survey of 1885. It is remembered for a man rather than a building. Around 1825 the hermit Ioakeim Kangas lived here, an unusual figure for Paxos, where religion was a family affair and solitary ascetics were not the custom. Near the church stood an enormous hollow Read more...

The church of Agios Nikolaos stands at the harbour of Loggos, where a church of Saint Nicholas belongs. Its carved wooden iconostasis was made in about 1883 by Simos Samouil of Lefkimmi, in Corfu, one of the few pieces on the island whose maker and date are both known. After Easter the icon of the Ypapanti, on its long journey Read more...

The third of the three churches of the Ascension on Paxos, in the north of the island between Magazia and Loggos. Three churches of one feast on an island this size is not an accident. The Ascension is a movable feast that falls in late spring, when the olive year is quiet and people can gather, and each of the Read more...

The Ascension of Anemogiannatika stands above Loggos, on the ridge of a low hill, in a walled yard with a single olive tree. A description from the 1880s gives it in detail: a lozenge-patterned doorway up four steps, a stone bench built against the wall, arched and crescent windows, a raised bell gable with no bell in it: the bell Read more...

The Ascension stands on the main square of Gaios and was the principal church of the town: in the 1880s it was called simply the Cathedral. Even then it had the problem it has now. The square lies barely above the water, and a south-easterly blowing into the harbour used to flood the church, one of the reasons the larger Read more...

A small church in the southern quarter of Gaios, and the main church of that part of the town. It stands just below the public cistern that carries its name, on the road towards the Nozias quarter, and it has a single bell hung from a wooden frame. It is one of the oldest churches on the island. The catalogue Read more...

Agios Charalambos was described in the nineteenth century as the protector of the island, and he is still one of the saints whose icon travels at Easter. The church sits on the high ground at Vlachopoulatika, with a view that is the reason most people climb to it. Its bell tower was newly built in the 1880s. A visitor of Read more...

The chapel of the Prophet Elias stands on the ridge above Gaios, a little to the right of the white church of Agia Paraskevi at Bogdanatika and some 250 metres north of the Pantokratoras of Makratika. Its red-painted doorway carries the date 1700 and a double-headed eagle, which makes it one of the older dated buildings on the island. Ancient Read more...

A very small chapel in the heart of Loggos, and easy to walk straight past: its door opens off the entrance passage of a house, so that from the lane it reads as part of the building rather than as a church. Private and family chapels like this one are common on Paxos, and they are the reason the island Read more...

Agia Paraskevi stands just above Magazia, among the olive groves that fill the valley between the village and Lakka. It is one of the many small churches of the Paxos interior, built and kept by the families of the surrounding hamlets rather than by a bishop or the state. That is the reason an island of this size counts several Read more...

The white church of Agia Paraskevi is the church of Bogdanatika. In the island survey of 1885 the hamlet, then thirty-three souls, is listed under her name, and the small chapel of the Prophet Elias stands a little to the right of it. The church still has its part in the Paxiot Easter. On Easter Monday the icon of the Read more...

Agios Konstantinos stands in the high ground between Magazia and Lakka. Two dates are cut into the building itself: 1720 over the doorway and 1835 in the stone paving of the floor. The first belongs to the church, the second to a later refurbishment. Both were read on the spot by a visitor in the 1880s, which makes this one Read more...

The Pantokratoras of Makratika is a small church with more painting inside it than its size suggests. Its walls were decorated with red floral patterns on a cream ground. The iconostasis carries two dates, 1804 and 1805. In the sanctuary are painted a Holy Trinity and a Virgin and Child, and beside the small altar of the Pantokrator hangs an Read more...

The Panagia of Fountana, properly the Theotokos of Vlacherna and to everyone on the island simply Vlacheraina, stands on the right-hand side of the old carriage road that runs down from Magazia towards Loggos. Its bell tower is dated 1772 and its iconostasis 1801. In front of the church grows a plane tree, which on Paxos is worth stopping for: Read more...

The white church of Agios Nikolaos belongs to Apergatika, a hamlet of some twenty-five houses on the Lakka side of the island, at the head of the valley that carries the saint’s name down towards the sea. It is unusually well dated. The lozenge-patterned doorway carries the year 1803, and above it sits a slab with a double-headed eagle. Inside, Read more...

For most of its history this was the only church on Antipaxos. It stands inland from the east coast, reached by a walled lane that passes a large wild pear tree and climbs among almond trees. The building is plain: six arched windows, a flat ceiling, a latticed gallery and wooden stalls, and a simple white stone iconostasis. Its bell Read more...