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. In the first dome is painted the Virgin, in the second Christ among a chorus of angels. The wall paintings that survive are the reason art historians come: one visitor in the 1880s compared their manner to Giotto and to the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. In 2004 work by the painter Aspiotis and parts of the original iconostasis were uncovered.

The bell tower is Venetian in type and carries the date 1774, read on the building itself. It holds four Russian bells, and visitors are usually allowed to climb up and ring them; the view takes in both coasts of the island at once. The last flight of steps is narrow.

In 1885 the iconostasis here was of grey Renaissance stone, with its icons set on silver plate. The marble one you see today is the work of the Corfiot craftsman Evangelos Kallos and dates from 1909.

In 1818 the church became the seat of the Bishop of Paxos. The vestments of Bishop Chrysanthos, who died in 1848, are kept in a case: a mitre worked with the evangelists and a double-headed eagle, a cross set with coral, and a reliquary of Saint Savvas with rubies and emeralds.

The Ypapanti is also the starting point of the island’s longest custom. After Easter its icon leaves here and travels for weeks from church to church across Paxos before coming home.

Feast day: 2 February. The church is often locked outside services.

Getting there: on foot through the olive groves from Lakka, about thirty minutes. The lane is difficult on a scooter.

Nearby: the sea cave known as the Grava of the Ypapanti, below the cliffs. The story that a tunnel runs from the cave up to the church is a local legend; the cave itself is about twelve metres deep.

Two old paths reach the church, and both are worth the walk. The grand flight of steps that climbs straight up from the churchyard becomes amazingly complex as it narrows, and it was uncovered and cleared again in 2008 and 2009 after years of neglect. The second comes down to the campanile from the Magazia side. It is paved and stepped and so well engineered that it must have been a main road before wheeled vehicles reached the island. Local opinion holds that the Venetians laid it in the same period in which they paid the Paxiots to plant their olives, and the English surveyor who mapped the footpaths of Paxos marked it on his map as an ancient path.