Blog
1 June 2026CreteΤάματα. Application Forms to Heaven
In forgotten chapels of Crete, beside icons and candles, hang silver plaques, children’s shoes, crutches and walking sticks. These are not decorations. They are material traces of requests, fears, gratitude and hope — small application forms addressed to heaven.
31 May 2026CreteThe Cats Stayed. A Short History of an Island Someone Else Always Thought Was Theirs
On Crete, civilizations came and went. The Minoans, Mycenaeans, Romans, Venetians and Ottomans left behind palaces, walls, scripts, wars and taxes. The cats watched it all from sun-warmed walls — and stayed.
30 May 2026CreteAn Island at the Crossroads of Death. Crete in the Time of Plague
In the summer of 1347, a ship from Constantinople sailed into the port of Chandax. It brought something no one was waiting for: a plague that would cut through medieval Crete, its cities, villages, ports, wills, and religious imagination.
28 May 2026CreteAgios Stefanos. A small church with an enormous story inside
At the edge of an oak forest near Drakona stands a church so small that it would be easy to take it for an unremarkable roadside chapel. And yet, in its faded frescoes, a rare story of Saint Stephen, the first martyr of Christianity, has survived — together with a trace of a world in which Byzantine Crete met the West.
26 May 2026CreteZoodochos Pigi, Alikianos. The Life-Giving Spring among the orchards
Amid the citrus groves of the Chania plain stands a church that does not announce itself from a distance. You need to know what you are looking for. It is worth the effort — beneath its floor lie children, on its walls lives John the Stranger, and the dedication to the Life-Giving Spring carries a weight here that it carries nowhere else.
- ✝23 May 2026Crete
Μέσκλα / Meskla. The Church of the Transfiguration, or the light hidden in the mountains
On the edge of a mountain village near Chania stands a small church that is easy to miss. And yet its frescoes are not merely decoration. They lead the visitor through a story of light, death, repentance and hope.
7 May 2026CreteWas Paul on Crete? A Ship, a Storm, and a Thousand Years of Legend
It all begins with a grain ship, an autumn storm, and a prisoner who knew more about the sea than the captain. Acts of the Apostles 27 is one of the most precise accounts of ancient seafaring to have survived to our time. Crete appears in it as an incidental backdrop — not a destination. And yet a thousand years later a wandering monk builds a church on a Cretan beach in honour of that prisoner. Between those two moments lies a question to which scholarship has no definitive answer.
26 April 2026CreteThe Cathedral That Lost to Time
A few miles outside Chania, on a road most cars never take, stand walls striped with red brick and columns of marble that does not exist on Crete. These are not the ruins of a village chapel. They are the ruins of an episcopal cathedral — the centre of Christianity across the entire western end of the island. They stood here for over a thousand years. Now they are disappearing, slowly, without a sign, without a fence, without anyone.
5 January 2026iconographyThe Moment When Heaven Splits Open. The Baptism of Christ in Iconography
The icon of the Baptism of the Lord does not show baptism in the sense in which the Gospel narrative presents it. It does not tell a story; it condenses theology. In a single image it gathers the moment when heaven opens, matter is sanctified, chaos gives way, and the cosmos — from the angels to the River Jordan — recognizes its Creator. Every detail of this scene is a precise sentence spoken in image. If we look carefully, we do not see an episode from the life of Jesus, but an icon of new creation.
31 December 2025ikonografiaWhy in Crete it is easier to meet Saint George than an undented car
In Crete it is easier to come across an image of Saint George than an undented car. He is on the walls of village churches, along old routes, in places far from towns and their fortifications. He does not always fight a dragon; more often he simply is—alert, present, ready to intervene. This essay is not about a saint from a legend, but about a figure of protection in a world that, for centuries, lived in the shadow of very real threats: pirates, wars, abductions, and sudden death.
30 December 2025kosciolyChurch of Saint George in Komitades (Sfakia)
The Church of Saint George in Komitades is a 14th-century sanctuary in the Sfakia region of Crete, known for its well-preserved frescoes painted by Ioannis Pagomenos and for a surviving foundation inscription dated to 1313–1314. Located far from main roads, in a stark mountain landscape, it stands as a valuable testimony to local piety, communal patronage, and the iconographic programme of the Venetian period.
27 December 2025kosciolyPanagia Church in Agios Ioannis (Aradena)
An exceptional church in an exceptional place.