Achai is on the wild west coast, and people do not come here for the beach. They come for what is beside it. The sea caves of Achai run one into the next. The largest of them was called the Achandakas, and the man who surveyed this coast in 1885 did not hold back: he called it one of the Read more...

Aftia Gaidarou means the donkey’s ears, and for once the name explains itself the moment you see it. Two rocks stand off the point, and the coastal survey of 1885 says exactly that: the cape of the donkey’s ears, from two reefs shaped like a donkey’s ears. It sits on the south coast between Soulanena and Ballos, on the run 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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 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...

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 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 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 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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Alati lies at the foot of the valley of the same name, on the east coast between Loggos and Gaios. A visitor of the 1880s described it in two strokes: whitish rock, and sand of the very finest. Above it, at the top of the cliff to the south east, there is something nobody has explained. A deep rectangular cut 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...

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...

Arkoydaki is on the north east shore below Lakka, and what makes it unusual on this island is water. The survey of 1885 records that here, right at the shore, water flowed into a small vaulted chamber, already ruined by then, with maidenhair fern growing in it. The water was called excellent, and the detail that matters is this: it Read more...

Avlaki of Vlachopoulatika is on the west coast, north of the Avlaki inlet proper and not to be confused with it. These are two different beaches. Getting here is the whole story. There is no road. You come by sea, or you take the path down from Vlachopoulatika, and that path is hard work: it drops over rock and through Read more...

Ballos is the short pebble beach near the southern end of the island, just before the coast turns into the bay of Porto Spuzzo, the sulphurous harbour of Ozias. It has a wreck story attached to it, recorded on the spot in 1885. A ship from Livorno, loaded with marble, was lost here, and the account says plainly that it Read more...

Boyrsanas is on the northern peninsula of Lakka, near the chapel of Agios Thomas and the beacon, a few minutes beyond Charami. Some people call it Missorachi, and that name has history behind it. When the coast of the Lakka harbour was surveyed in 1885 the boat tour of the bay began from a place called Missorachi, and the cape Read more...

Charami is one of the very few sandy beaches on Paxos. The island’s own writer lists it as such, in a list where almost everything else is shingle. The 1885 survey of this coast gives it as sto Charami to Gouli, and describes a wide olive planted valley coming down to a shingle shore, with walls built of projecting stones. Read more...

Daskalia is a small island near Antipaxoi. Diving here is of moderate difficulty.You can find tunas to at the bottom of the sea. Special thanks to the dive center “Water Planet” for the underwater photos. 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...

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 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...