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Panayia Evangelistria Review

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Panayia Evangelistria

Address: At end of Megalohari, Tinos Town
Phone: 22830/22256

Category: Religious Sites
Location: Tinos

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Fodor's Review:

The Tiniots, hardly unaware of the icon's potential, immediately built the splendid Panayia Evangelistria, or Church of the Annunciate Virgin, on the site, using the most costly marble from Tinos, Paros, and Delos. The church's marble courtyards (note the green-veined Tiniot stone) are paved with pebble mosaics and surrounded by offices, chapels, a health station, and seven museums. Inside the upper three-aisle church dozens of beeswax candles and precious votives—don't miss the golden orange tree near the door donated by a blind man who was granted sight—dazzle the eye. You must often wait in line to see the little icon, which is encrusted with jewels, donated as thanks for cures. To beseech the icon's aid, a sick person sends a young female relative or a mother brings her sick infant. As the pilgrim descends from the boat, she falls to her knees, with traffic indifferently whizzing about her, and crawls painfully up the faded red padded lane on the main street—1 km (½ mi)—to the church. In the church's courtyards, she and her family camp for several days, praying to the magical icon for a cure, which sometimes comes. This procedure is very similar to the ancient one observed in Tinos's temple of Poseidon. The lower church, called the Evresis, celebrates the finding of the icon; in one room a baptismal font is filled with silver and gold votives. The chapel to the left commemorates the torpedoing by the Italians, on Dormition Day, 1940, of the Greek ship Helle; in the early stages of the war, the roused Greeks amazingly overpowered the Italians.

Cost: Free
Open: Daily 8:30-3

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