Church of Saint Paul

The church of Saint Paul stands at the edge of the beach, where the sand ends and the rock begins. You can reach it only by boat from Agia Roumeli or by an hour's scramble along the E4. That inaccessibility is part of the meaning of this place. The building dates from around 1040. It was erected by John Xenos — a wandering ascetic who founded churches in the most remote corners of western Crete. He chose this beach deliberately: the coastline between Loutro and Agia Roumeli lay exactly on the route of the ship carrying the Apostle Paul as a prisoner to Rome in the autumn of 59 or 60 AD. The ship did not put in here — it passed this shore on its way toward Malta. But tradition held that Paul had looked out at these rocks from the deck. That was enough. Architectural type: free-cross domed church, characteristic of eleventh-century Byzantine architecture. Two later frescoes survive inside. The Libyan Sea reaches the south wall during storms; salt and mortar have fused the structure into an almost monolithic whole. Paul was on Crete — he stopped at Kaloi Limenes (Fair Havens), some distance to the east. Did he see this beach from the deck? Possibly. Did he land here? Almost certainly not. The church was built in honour of a man who sailed past.