Agios Antonios at Mitsialatika was built by a member of the Mitsialis family and is described in the catalogue of 1739 as a new church, so it went up shortly before that date. The records disagree on the founder’s first name: the English entry has Zapheiris Mitsialis, the older Greek one Lavrentios Mitsialis. We keep both until the point can Read more...

Agios Thomas in Lakka appears in none of the old catalogues. The simplest explanation is the one the Greek record gives: it is a small church and was probably built around 1880, long after the lists were drawn up. That makes it one of the youngest churches on Paxos, and a useful reminder that the island did not stop building Read more...

Agios Nikolaos gives his name to the islet that closes the harbour of Gaios. The church is a dependency of the Panagia of the Vellianites and appears in the catalogue of 1686, so it already stood when the Venetian castle above it was still in use. It sits at the southern end of the islet, inside the walls. Its stone Read more...

Agios Nikolaos at Magazia, known as the Agios Nikolaos of Manesis, belongs to the Manesis and Grammatikos families and appears in the catalogue of 1686. It was renovated in 1803. On the wall there is an inscription that can no longer be read. Paxiot churches are usually generous with their dates (over a door, in the middle flagstone of a Read more...

Agios Isavros at Kastanida belonged to the Grammatikos family and appears in the catalogue of 1686. Kastanida is the quarter above Lakka that the islanders knew as the place of the stonecutters: the flagstones that paved the yards, the churches and the cisterns of Paxos came from the workings here, and for a long time cut stone was one of Read more...

Pantokratoras at Ypapandi belongs to the Argyros family and appears in the catalogue of 1686. It was rebuilt on its original foundations by the monk Ionikios Argyros in 1760. A visitor in the 1880s called it a thoroughly unpretentious little church, and meant it kindly: a plain projecting sanctuary, a mossy forecourt, a lozenge-patterned side doorway, a square door with Read more...

Agios Ioannis at Pialouches, in the district of Lakka, belongs to the Grammatikos, Petros, Aronis, Argyros and Basilas families. It appears in the list of 1805 and was built before 1750. Five family names on one small church is unusual even for Paxos, and it says something about how these buildings were held: shares in a church passed down like Read more...

Agios Vasilios at Dalietatika belongs to the Makris, Mastoras, Argyros and Grammatikos families and is listed in 1781. Like the Agios Dimitrios a little below it, its foundations were laid in 1750 and work was still under way in 1777: the hamlet was building two churches at once, over a generation. Feast day: 1 January. Read more...

Agios Panteleimon at Upper Mastoratika appears in the catalogue of 1739; by 1754 it is recorded as completely destroyed, and what stands today is its rebuilding. A description made in the 1880s gives the church as it was before the modern repairs. Twelve steps lead up in front of it to the cemetery, through what the visitor called a kind Read more...

Agios Dimitrios at Dalietatika is listed in 1781. Its foundations were laid in 1750 and work was still going on in 1777: twenty-seven years of building, which for a hamlet church was normal rather than slow: these were put up out of what was left over after the harvest. The church belongs to the Dalietos and Argyros families, together with Read more...

Agios Georgios at Aronatika belongs to the Aronis, Angelis and Kontaris families and appears in the catalogue of 1686. It stands on the little hill that carries the saint’s name, looking down over Lakka. In 1734 its iconostasis was made and the church was painted. Feast day: 23 April. Read more...

Agios Dimitrios at Dendiatika belongs to the Dendias families and appears in the catalogue of 1686. It was restored in 1735 and its icons were painted in 1744. Dendiatika held two churches of the same family, this one and the Taxiarches, both restored and painted in the same years. They were plainly treated as one undertaking. Feast day: 26 October. Read more...

The Taxiarches, the Archangels, at Dendiatika belong to the Dendias families and appear in the catalogue of 1686. The church was restored in 1735 and its icons were painted in 1744. It is the second of the two Dendias churches of the hamlet; the other is Agios Dimitrios, a few hundred metres away, restored and painted in the same years. Read more...

Agios Georgios of the Zernos family was built in 1659 and burnt in 1930. That first date makes it one of the oldest dated churches on Paxos: it was standing before most of the island’s olive groves were planted, and before the catalogue of 1686 in which so many of the other churches first appear. In the survey of 1885 Read more...

Agios Iakovos belongs to the Anemogiannis, Stanelos, Mourikis and Zernos families. It is listed in 1805 and was very probably built in 1740. In the survey of 1885 it is the church of the hamlet of Stanelatika, in the district of Fountana. One of the owning families gave the island a painter: Michail Mourikis, brother of Bishop Dionysios, whose work Read more...

The Yperayia Theotokos Eleousa, the Merciful Mother of God, is the church of Vlachopoulatika. It stands a few dozen metres from the crossroads by the school buildings. It is the first entry in the oldest surviving catalogue of the churches of Paxos, drawn up in 1686, which counts thirty nine churches and twenty priests for the whole island. The entry Read more...

Agia Aikaterini at Katsimatika belongs to the Katsimis and Tranakas families. The catalogue of 1739 notes that it had been built only a short time before. Katsimatika was one of the few hamlets on Paxos that did anything besides olives. In the nineteenth century there were beehives here, kept in the thickness of the house walls of Ioannis Katsimis and Read more...

Agia Paraskevi at Lekatika, above Ozias, appears in the catalogue of 1686 and belongs to the Lekkas and Loisios families. A visitor in the 1880s found it a little past the taverns, on the right: a lightly projecting sanctuary, a cross-shaped window, a lozenge-patterned arch and two crescent windows; a small graveyard with flat stones beside it; the bell hanging Read more...

Agios Panteleimon at Agathatika, above Ozias, carries one of the best documented foundation stories on Paxos. It was begun in about 1710 by Depos Agathos. He did not live to finish it, and in his will of 10 February 1710 he instructed his nephew and heir, Pieros Agathos, to complete the work. The church was dedicated less than a month Read more...

Agios Isavros stands on the highest point of Paxos, a little over two hundred metres above the sea, in the middle of the island. From the yard you look down on both coasts at once, and on a clear day across to Corfu and the mountains of Epirus. In the churchyard there is a well dating from 1935. On an Read more...