Church of the Virgin Mary's Birth

Church of the Virgin Mary's Birth Review

This post-Byzantine three-aisle basilica is by tradition linked to St. Anastasios, a Nafpliote painter. Anastasios was supposedly engaged to a local girl, but he abandoned her because she was immoral. Becoming despondent as a result of spells cast over him by her relatives, he converted to Islam. When the spell wore off, he cried out, "I was a Christian, I am a Christian, and I shall die a Christian." An Ottoman judge ordered that he be beheaded, but a Turkish mob stabbed Anastasios to death. His corpse was then allegedly hanged on an ancient olive tree that rises next to the church and that never again bore fruit. The basilica was the main Orthodox church during the Venetian occupation and has an elaborate wooden reredos carved in 1870.