Church of the Archangel Michael

A small stone church hidden in the shade of olive trees, its plain, austere façade giving no hint of the richness concealed within. Passing through the low, arched portal, one enters an interior densely covered in wall paintings — one of the fuller and better-preserved iconographic programs in this part of Crete. The apse draws the eye at once: the place occupied in most Byzantine churches by Christ Pantokrator here belongs to the church's own patron — a monumental, winged Archangel Michael gazes down upon the faithful from the conch, in the full majesty of the commander of the heavenly host. The nave is separated from the sanctuary by a rarely surviving masonry iconostasis — a stone screen with a narrow passage at its centre, adorned with paintings of the Theotokos and saints, a testament to an older form of church architecture that has almost entirely given way, elsewhere on the island, to wooden templon screens. Among the many scenes covering the walls and vault — the Christological cycle, mounted saints, choirs of angels — one stands out as a rarity: Saint George on horseback, carrying a boy miraculously rescued after being abducted from his parents' home. It is an echo of a distant, eastern tradition of the saint's legend, here transposed onto a Cretan wall. The whole — vivid still, despite seven centuries, the cracks and the losses of plaster — remains a living testimony to the skill of the painting workshop active in this region of Crete in the first half of the 14th century.