The sculptures of Thessaloniki: 6, Admiral Nikolaos Votsis by Georgios Dimitriadis, in front of the White Tower

The bust of Admiral Nikolaos Votsis by Georgios Dimitriadis in front of the White Tower in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I was recalling last week how I came across a collection of photographs of modern sculptures in the streets and parks of Thessaloniki and how I realised that I had written little about these sculptures over the years.

Rather than leave the photographs and memories in forgotten files on my laptop or in the cloud, I started an occasional series of blog postings on some of those modern sculptures I have rediscovered in Thessaloniki. Over the next few weeks, I am inviting you to join me in a minor odyssey of recovery and discovery as my mind wanders through Thessaloniki, looking at these sculptures again.

The sculptures I looked at last week include the monumental statues of Aristotle, Alexander the Great and Eleftherios Venizelos, and the Jewish Memorial by Konstantinos Lentaris in the campus of the Aristotele University of Thessaloniki.

The bust of Admiral Nikolaos Votsis (1877-1934) in front of the White Tower on the waterfront is a fine example of monumental sculpture in the city. The sculpture by Georgios Dimitriadis (1880-1941) is one of the oldest in the city and it depicts Votsis as both strict and imposing.

Admiral Nikolaos Votsis (Νικόλαος Βότσης) was a senior naval officer from Hydra. The sinking of the Feth-i Bülend may not have had much military significance, but it was a great morale boost to the Greeks. It was the first of a series of naval successes in the war, and a week later, the city was surrendered to the Greek army. The mast of the Turkish ship was placed on the White Tower, and the Greek flag was flown from it.

The bust of Admiral Votsis became a symbol of the liberation of Thessaloniki and of resistance to the occupation during World War II (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Votsis became a national hero and has been compared with the legendary fireship captains of the Greek Revolution. While he was a student at the Naval Academy, he took part in the naval blockade of Crete in 1896-1897, in the run-up to the Greco-Turkish War in 1897.

Votsis rose to the rank of Rear Admiral, commanded two more battleships and then became Greece’s High Commissioner to the Allied mission in Constantinople (Istanbul). Later, he was captain of the battleship Limnos, which supported Greek landings in Turkey and took part in the final Greek sea-borne withdrawal in 1922. He died in exile in Paris in 1931.

The sculptor of this bust, Georgios Dimitriadis (Γεώργιος Δημητριάδης), was born in Athens. He specialised in monumental public sculpture and was one of the most productive sculptors of his time. In an eclectic way, he drew on neoclassic and academic aesthetic styles, often brightened with naturalistic and allegoric elements.

The bust of Admiral Nikolaos Votsis is on a marble pyramidal pedestal inscribed with verses in his honour written by the Greek satirical poet Giorgos Souris (1853-1919), who has been described as a ‘modern Aristophanes.’

The side of the plinth is inscribed with the names of the torpedo boat crew that Votsis commanded when he sank the Ottoman battleship Feth-i Bülend in the harbour of Thessaloniki 18 October 1912, during the First Balkan War.

The poet Giorgos Souris published celebratory and satirical verse dedicated to the liberation of Thessaloniki from Ottoman rule and the entry of the Greek army in November 1912 in his weekly verse newspaper O Romios (The Greek) on 10 November 1912. He used sharp, rhythmic, and popular rhyming verse to capture national enthusiasm, political commentary and the historic significance of the city’s liberation.

The verses in honour of Admiral Votsis written by the Greek satirical poet Giorgos Souris in 1912 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The bust of Votsis became a symbol of the liberation of Thessaloniki. During the German occupation and World War II, the sculpture became the final point of resistance rallies, when young people laid a wreath and sang the national anthem, while the Nazis pointed guns at them.

Three ships of the Hellenic Navy have borne the name Lemnos or Limnos (Λήμνος), named after the island of Lemnos and the First Balkan War Battle of Lemnos. The first was the battleship Lemnos (1914-1932), commanded by Votsis, and the name and its traditions have been held since 1982 by the Greek frigate Limnos.

I was on board the frigate Limnos 30 years ago in 1996 as part of a flotilla that took about two dozen journalists from Kalymnos to see the islets of Imia at the height of tensions that year between Greece and Turkey, and then brought us back to Rhodes.

There was a continuity between that trip in the Aegean in 1996, and the career of Votsis that began with the naval blockade of Crete 100 years earlier in 1896-1897. The frigate Limnos continues to be present in Greek-Turkish tensions in the Aegean, which have been reignited with a retired Turkish admiral threatening the Greek presence on five Greek islands: Lesvos, Chios, Samos, Kos and Kastellorizo. Recent Turkish assertion at the highest level have extended claims to several other Greek islands, including Crete, Rhodes and Lemnos.

In this series:

1, Introduction (21 September 2026)

2, Aristotle by Giorgos Georgiadis, Aristotelous Square (22 September 2026)

3, Alexander the Great by Evangelos Moustakas, Alexander’s Garden (23 September 2026)

4, Eleftherios Venizelos by Giannis Pappas, Plateia Dikastirion (24 September 2026)

5, The Jewish Monument by Konstantinos Lentaris, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (25 September 2026)

6, Admiral Nikolaos Votsis by Georgios Dimitriadis, in front of the White Tower (1 October 2026)

Next: The Monument of the Jewish Holocaust by Nandor Glid, Eleftherias Square (2 October 2026)

The bust of Admiral Nikolaos Votsis by Georgios Dimitriadis, in front of the White Tower at night (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Hotel Russell has had a name change, but it is still an impressive Victorian presence on Russell Square

The former Hotel Russell on Russell Square in Bloomsbury was designed by the architect Charles Fitzroy Doll (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I have been in London six or seven times already this year, and when I find myself in the Bloomsbury area I often stop in Russell Square to admire the former Hotel Russell, even though it has lost the name it was known by for more than a century and is now called the Kimpton Fitzroy London.

The hotel at 1-8 Russell Square is a Grade II* listed building and was designed by the architect Charles Fitzroy Doll (1850-1929), who was the surveyor of the Bedford Estate. It was built in 1892-1898 and opened in 1900.

It is built of red brick with terracotta dressings, distinctively clad in decorative thé-au-lait (‘tea with milk’) terracotta, and was modelled on the Château de Madrid near the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. Its roofs and turrets have striking green fish-scale tiles, and the tall Victorian chimney-stacks have horizontal brick and terracotta bands. The hotel originally had a central copper dome and lantern instead of its present tiled mansard roof, and once must have been a more impressive site.

The architect Charles Fitzroy Doll specialised in designing hotels. He also designed the dining room on the Titanic, basing it on his design for the dining room in the Hotel Russell, known until recently known as Fitzroy Doll’s.

Doll was educated in Germany, then trained as an architect under Sir Matthew Digby Wyatt, and he was involved with Wyatt in designing the India Office in London in 1866-1868.

The sculptor Henry Charles Fehr modelled the life-size statues on the façade of four queens who look down on Russell Square from above the main entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Doll was appointed surveyor to the Bedford Estates in Bloomsbury and Covent Garden in 1885. When he designed the Hotel Russell with its distinctive cladding, Doll engaged the sculptor Henry Charles Fehr to model the four life-size statues of British queens who look down on Russell Square from above the main entrance.

Doll was a member of Holborn Borough Council, and was Mayor of Holborn in 1904-1905 and 1912-1913. He died in 1929 aged 79. His children included Christian Charles Tyler Doll (1880-1955), who was involved in the reconstruction of the grand staircase of the Palace of King Minos at Knossos in Crete, working alongside Arthur Evans. He also designed the Villa Ariadne, a residence for Evans at Knossos that now houses the Knossos Research Centre.

The style of the Hotel Russell is described in its listing as ‘flamboyant French Renaissance … derived from engravings of the Château de Madrid, with elaborate decorations.’ The architectural historians Bridget Cherry and Sir Nikolaus Pevsner call it ‘monumental’.

The hotel is known for its palatial design, and its fixtures and fittings included an ornate Pyrenean marble staircase and an interior sunken garden. Each room was fitted with an en-suite bathroom, quite an innovation at the time.

Doll’s façade also displays the coats of arms of the world’s nations as they were in 1898, incorporated in the spandrels of the first floor. At the centre of the principal façade facing Russell Square, above the main entrance, are life-size terracotta statues of four reigning queens – Elizabeth I, Mary II, Anne and Victoria – and columns decorated with putti, both surmounted with knights flanking floral decoration above the decorative foundation date ‘1898’.

The larger than life terracotta statues represent idealised versions of the four queens. Elizabeth I is readily identifiable because of her ruff,while Victoria is depicted as a very young woman. But there is some confusion over who is who when it comes to Mary II and Anne, while a fifth reigning English queen, Mary I, is noticeably absent.

The statues of the four queens are the work of the sculptor Henry Charles Fehr (1867-1940), also created the busts of four Prime Ministers – Lord Derby, Lord Salisbury, William Gladstone and Benjamin Disraeli – on the Guilford Street façade of the hotel.

Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary II among the four queens above the hotel entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Fehr produced several notable public sculptures, war memorials and works for civic buildings, including sculptures for Middlesex Guildhall, Wakefield County Hall and Cardiff City Hall. His war memorials can be seen in for towns and cities throughout Britain and often feature detailed bronze statuary.

Doll also designed the Imperial Hotel (1905-1907) in Russell Square, described by the architectural historian Sir Niklaus Pevsner as a ‘vicious mixture of Art Nouveau Gothic and Art Nouveau Tudor’. The Imperial Hotel was demolished in 1967, and replaced by a contemporary, brutalist building designed by George Anthony Wilson Brandeth and where I stayed once when I was working with The Irish Times. Today it is known as the President Hotel.

Doll also designed the Flemish French-Gothic terrace of shops and apartments on the corner of Torrington Place and Gower Street. It was designed in 1907 and now includes the London University branch of Waterstones. The bookshop is in the heart of literary Bloomsbury and I, like many of my generation, still think of it as Dillon’s. Today, this branch of Waterstones claims it is the largest new and second-hand bookshop in Europe.

The Hotel Russell was one of the few hotels in this part of London not taken over by the War Office during World War II. It survived the war largely intact, but the magnificent dome was badly damaged in an air raid during the Blitz in 1941 and was never replaced.

The Hotel Russell continued to be known by that name for more than a century until 2018. After extensive renovations, the hotel reopened in 2018 as the Principal London. Three months later, it was bought by Covivio Hotels, which then transferred its management to InterContinental Hotels Group, and the hotel was renamed the Kimpton Fitzroy London later that year. The restaurant Doll designed was originally named after him but is now called Fitz’s.

Queen Anne and Queen Victoria among the four queens above the hotel entrance (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Russell Group of universities, which was formed in 1994, is named after Hotel Russell, where the first informal meetings took place, and thankfully it has not changed its name.

The Russell Group now brings together 24 British universities that are often seen as Britain’s best. Together, they receive over three-quarters of all university research grant and contract income in the UK, they award 60% of all doctorates gained in the UK, they account for 65% of all world-leading research conducted in the UK, and their research is judged overwhelmingly to be world-leading or internationally excellent. Their graduates hold 61% of all UK jobs that require a university degree, despite being only 17% of all higher education graduates.

The Russell Group first included 17 universities: Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Imperial College London, Leeds, Liverpool, London School of Economics, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Oxford, Sheffield, Southampton, University College London and Warwick.

With the exception of Warwick, which was established in the 1960s, the founder members of the Russell Group were all universities or university colleges prior to World War I, and they included most of Britain’s ancient universities and ‘redbrick universities’. Cardiff University and King’s College London joined the Russell Group in 1998.

Queen’s University Belfast became the 20th member in 2006, and four more universities – Durham, Exeter, Queen Mary University of London, and York – joined the Russell Group in 2012.

The hotel may have changed its name in recent years, but the Russell and Bedford names continue in the streets and squares of Bloomsbury, and in some places there are memories too of the philosopher Bertrand Russell. But, perhaps, more about that in the days to come.

The Russell Group of universities is named after Hotel Russell, where the first informal meetings of the group took place in 1994 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time 2026: 88, Monday 3 August 2026

‘He made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side’ (Matthew 14: 22) … a fishing boat on the Sarawak River in Kuching (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

We are continuing in Ordinary Time in the Church Calendar and the week began with the Ninth Sunday after Trinity (Trinity IX, 2 August 2026).

Before today begins, I am taking some quiet time this morning to give thanks, for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, today’s Gospel reading;

2, a reflection on the Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary;

4, the Collects and Post-Communion prayer of the day.

Punters on the Backs and the River Cam behind King’s College, Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Matthew 14: 22-36 (NRSVA):

22 Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. 23 And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, 24 but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. 25 And early in the morning he came walking towards them on the lake. 26 But when the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.’

28 Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ 29 He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came towards Jesus. 30 But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, ‘Lord, save me!’ 31 Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’ 32 When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. 33 And those in the boat worshipped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

34 When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. 35 After the people of that place recognized him, they sent word throughout the region and brought all who were sick to him, 36 and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed.

Boats at Salter’s by Folly Bridge in Oxford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Today’s Reflections

In last year or two, I have enjoyed being on boats in Sarawak and Singapore, barge trips on the Grand Union Canal, and watching rowers and boats in York, on the Backs in Cambridge, on the river in Oxford and in York. I even had the pleasure many years ago of one college boat club in Cambridge asking to use one of my photographs in a fundraising drive.

It is almost 60 years since I first went rowing as a teenager on Lough Ramor in Virginia. But I had long thought that I would be left regretting that I had taken up courses in Cambridge when I was too late in life to learn, or to re-learn, how to row.

I had come to enjoy rowing as a sport and an activity, but in a very passive way.

Then, shortly after I arrived in Askeaton in 2017, one evening, as I was standing at a slipway by the banks of the Rover Deel, I was invited suddenly and unexpectedly to get into a boat and to row.

I was fearless. It was a pleasure I had often hoped for and wished for. And for almost an hour, we rowed upstream, under the bridge at Askeaton, and as far as the castle, and then downstream past the factory, although not as far as the estuary. When I suggested that I might be too old to learn, or re-learn, how to row, I was told brusquely and with humour that once I stopped learning I had stopped living.

Later that same week, I watched children and teenagers hop in and out of boats, freely and fearlessly, confident of their own ability and the ability of those who were training them.

Fearlessly. But as I was messing about on boats in Crete some weeks earlier, hopping on and off them in the sun as I visited smaller islands and lagoons, I thought of how this was a pleasure that I was paying for and wondered but how many refugees were full of fear as they boarded boats in the dark trying to arrive on Greek islands, having paid exorbitantly for the risk and the dangers.

Fearlessly. What are your worst fears?

I know, at present, many of us have fears arising out of the wars between Russia and Ukraine, the wars involving the US in Iran and the Gulf, Israel in Gaza and Lebanon, and the global insecurity created by the mercurial decision-making by the Trump regime.

As we grow up and mature, we tend to have fewer fears of the outside world, and as adults we begin to cope with the fears we once had as children, by turning threats into opportunities.

The fears I had as a child – of snakes, of the wind, of storms at sea, of lightning – are no longer the stuff of recurring nightmares they were as a child. I have learned to be cautious, to be sensible and to keep my distance, and to be in awe of God’s creation.

But most of us have recurring dreams that are vivid and that have themes that keep repeating themselves. They fall into a number of genres, and most psychotherapists identify a number of these types of dreams that most of us deal with in our sleep at various stages in adult life.

They include dreams about:

• Drowning.

• Finding myself unprepared for a major function or event, whether it is social or work-related.

• Flying or floating in the air, but then falling suddenly.

• Being caught naked in public.

• Missing a train, a bus or a plane.

• Caught in loos or lifts that do not work, or that overwork themselves.

• Calling out in a crowd but failing to vocalise my scream or not being heard in the crowd or recognised.

• Falling, falling into an abyss.

There are others. But in sleep the brain can act as a filter or filing cabinet, helping us to process, deal with and put aside what we have found difficult to understand in our waking hours, or to try to find ways of dealing with our lack of confidence, feelings of inadequacy, with the ways we confuse gaining attention with receiving love, or with our needs to be accepted, affirmed and loved.

There are two choices in the lectionary for Gospel readings at the Eucharist today: Matthew 14: 13-21, or Matthew 14: 22-36. The first choice was also the Gospel reading yesterday.

In this second, alternative Gospel reading (Matthew 14: 22-36), Saint Peter’s plight seems to be a working out of a constant, recurring, vivid dream of the type that many of us experience at some stage: the feelings of drowning, floating and falling suddenly, being in a crowd and yet alone, calling out and not being heard, or not being recognised for who we are.

Peter sees Christ walking on the lake or floating effortlessly above the water. At first, he thinks he is seeing a ghost. But then Christ calls to him, and Saint Peter responds.

Once he recognises Christ, Saint Peter gets out of the boat, starts walking on the water, and comes towards Christ. But he loses his confidence when he notices the strong wind, he is frightened, and he begins to sink.

He cries out: ‘Lord, save me.’ Christ immediately reaches out his hand and catches him, saying to him, ‘You of little faith, why did you doubt?’

They get back into the boat, the wind ceases. And those in the boat worship him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’

Was the sight of Christ walking on the water an illusion?

Was Peter’s idea that he could walk on the water the product of an over-worked mind while he was sleeping?

Did he realise he was unprepared for the great encounter?

Did the wind cease when he woke from the dream?

All of these questions are over-analytical and fail to deal with the real encounter that takes place.

Even before the Resurrection, in his frailty, in his weakness, in his humble humanity, Saint Peter calls out to Christ: ‘Lord, save me’ (verse 30).

Do the others in the boat fall down at Christ’s feet and worship him because he can walk on water? Because he can lift a drowning man out of the depths? Or because they recognise that in Christ they can find the end to all their worst dreams and nightmares?

Despite the heatwaves we have been experiencing this summer, we know too, as they say, to expect the unexpected when we are on water, whether it is a river or a canal, a lake or at sea. Everyone needs to know that the weather can turn, the waters can become choppy, and this can be a frightening experience, even on rivers, close to the river bank and close to firm land.

As seasoned boat-handlers, the Disciples know not to try walking on water. They know the risk of sudden storms and swells, and they know the safety of a good boat, as long as it has a good crew.

But since the early history of the Church, the boat has symbolised the Church.

The bark (barque or barchetta) symbolises the Church tossed on the sea of disbelief, worldliness, and persecution but finally reaching safe harbour. Part of the imagery comes from the ark saving Noah’s family during the Flood (I Peter 3: 20-21). Christ protects Peter’s boat and the Disciples on the stormy Sea of Galilee (see also Mark 6: 45-52; John 6 16-21). The mast forms the shape of the Cross.

It is an image that appears in Apostolic Constitutions and the writings of Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria. We still retain the word nave for the main part of the church, which, architecturally often looks like an up-turned boat.

So, I do would not want any of us to risk walking on water, or to play stupidly in boats on the river or on a lake, and certainly not off the coast or out to see.

But if we are to dream dreams for our parishes, for the Church, for the Kingdom of God, we need to be aware that it comes at the risk of feeling our dreams may be the nightmares of others.

If we are going to dream dreams for our parishes, for the Church, for the Kingdom of God, we may need to step out of our safety zones, our comfort zones, and know that this comes with a risk warning.

And if we are going to dream dreams for our parishes, for the Church, for the Kingdom of God, we need to keep our eyes focussed on Christ, and to know that the Church is there to bring us on that journey.

Let us dream dreams, take risks for the Kingdom of God, step outside the box. But let us keep our eyes on Christ and remember that the boat, the Church, is essential for our journey, and let us continue to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.

An icon of the Church as a boat, including Christ, the Apostles and the Church Fathers (Icon: Deacon Matthew Garrett, www.holy-icons.com)

Today’s Prayers (Monday 3 August 2026):

In Pray with the World Church, the prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), the theme this week (2-8 August 2026, pp 24-25), is ‘Faith Under Pressure in Nicaragua’. This theme was introduced yesterday with a Reflection by the Most Revd Juan David Alvarado, Bishop of El Salvador and Primate of the Province of the Anglican Church in Central America.

The USPG prayer diary today (Monday 3 August 2026) invites us to pray:

Lord, strengthen your Church in Nicaragua as it faces fear and persecution. Grant courage and protection to all who continue to witness to your truth.

The Collect of the Day:

Almighty God,
who sent your Holy Spirit
to be the life and light of your Church:
open our hearts to the riches of your grace,
that we may bring forth the fruit of the Spirit
in love and joy and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post Communion Prayer:

Holy Father,
who gathered us here around the table of your Son
to share this meal with the whole household of God:
in that new world where you reveal the fullness of your peace,
gather people of every race and language
to share in the eternal banquet of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Gracious Father,
revive your Church in our day,
and make her holy, strong and faithful,
for your glory’s sake
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s reflections

Continued tomorrow

Learning, or re-learning, how to row on the River Deel at Askeaton, Co Limerick

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

At sea in the Aegean 30 years ago, when tensions between Greece and Turkey raised fears of war

Peaceful afternoons on the beach near Rethymnon are seldom interrupted by sonic booms and overflights, unlike 30 years ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

I have been coming to Greece and to Crete in particular, for almost 40 years, since the 1980s. I remember how I felt at home the very first morning, as I was being taken by coach from Iraklion Airport to Rethymnon. Greece grew on me very quickly, and there were times when I was back and forth to Greece two or three times a year, sometimes for family holidays, sometimes for social visits, and often as a working journalist, covering Greek politics, culture, economic crisises, tensions with Turkey in the Aegean. On other trips, I was visiting monasteries and churches, including Mount Athos and Patmos, or attending lectures and seminars in Athens, Thessaloniki and on the remote and tiny island of Halki off the coast of Rhodes.

One of those busy years was 1996, when I found myself writing about Greek life and politics on a regular basis. I was reminded of this last month when friends posted about the 30th anniversary of the death of Andreas Papanddreou, a towering and heroic modern Greek leader and a key figure in bringing about the collapse of the colonels’ regime in 1974. He died on 23 June 1996, and I wrote his obituary for The Irish Times the next day.

But 1996 was a busy year for me in Greece. I wrote profiles of the new prime minister, Costas Simitis, interviewed the foreign minister, Theodoros Pangalos, followed the tensions in the Aegean over the Turkey’s agressive claims to the islets of Imia, wrote features on the poetry of Yiannis Ritos and CP Cavafy, reported on the growing clamour for the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the British Museum to Athens, and analysed Greek political support for the application by Cyprus for EU membership.

In recent years, I have been returning regularly to Rethymnon and the suburban areas to the east at Platanias and Tsesmes and even further east at Panormos. It is a relatively quiet area for holidays, with the long sandy beches stretching for miles east of Rethymnon. There is a family-friendly and laid-back atmosphere, with few if any signs offering cheap beer to lager louts, as I have seen further east in places such as Hersonissos and Malia.

It is easy to fall asleep in the afternoon at places like Pavlos Beach in Platanias, undisturbed in the sunshine. But it was not always so, and it was not so 30 years ago, back in 1996. Not because of loud lager louts, not because Crete was attracting the wrong sort of tourists, and certainly not because of bad management on anyone’s part. But because of the threat of war.

An afternoon’s snooze on the beach was regularly interrupted in the 1980s and the 1990s by the sonic booms of overflying Greek air force jets, preparing or returning from buzzing their Turkish counterparts over the blue waters of the Aegean and the Mediterranean.

It almost came to a full-scale war between Greece and Turkey 30 years ago, and all because of a dispute over who owned the two tiny uninhabited rocky islets of Imia. I was flown into the middle of it all in 1996, and ended up as a part of a press posse that was threatened with coming under fire from the Turkish navy.

The dispute back in 1996 cost the lives of three crew members of a Greek Navy helicopter who died during a mission, and 30 years later, despite improved relations between Athens and Ankara in the intervening decades, many Greeks have not forgotten this tense time in modern Greek history a generation ago.

The crisis had international leaders scrambling to urge both sides not to come to blows over what was derided as a pile of rocks. But Greece insisted they were ‘Greek rocks’m and Athens refused to back down as Ankara tried to assert Turkish sovereignty. Greeks were reminded all too easily of the Turkish invasion of Cyprus over 20 years earlier on 20 July 1974.

Windmills at the entrance to the harbour in Rhodes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Imia is part of the Dodesanese islands, which are dripping with history and oozing with culture: Kos, where Hippocrates formulated the foundations of modern medicine; Patmos, where Saint John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation; Kalymnos, Leros and Symi, with their neo-classical mansions; and Rhodes, where the giant Colossos once straddled the harbour of Mandhraki, holding aloft the flame of freedom that inspired the Statue of Liberty.

At the crossroads of three continents, this island chain was once ruled by Alexander the Great and Ptolemy; it has been occupied by the Romans, the Crusaders, the Venetians, the Knights of Saint John, the Turks, the Italians and Nazi Germany. Only with the end of World War II was it finally handed over by Britain and incorporated into the Greek state almost 80 years ago, in 1947.

Today, only 26 of the Dodecanese islands are inhabited: the largest, Rhodes, has about 100,000 people, but most have only a few hundred residents or less, and there are only 79 people left on Pserimos.

The large Turkish minorities in Rhodes and Kos and the mosques and minarets still dotting the skylines of many islands are ever-present reminders that Turkey occupied the Dodecanese for almost 400 years, from 1522 to 1912. Turkey is Greece’s nearest neighbour, and on many islands you can feel it is almost possible to touch the Turkish coast with its harbours and towns, houses and hotels.

On 29 December 1995, Turkey asserted the Imia islets were Turkish territory, registered in the prefecture of Bodrum. The dispute began when a Turkish cargo ship, Figen Akat ran ashore on the islets and had to be salvaged. It turned out that maps of were showing conflicting claims of the islets by Greece and Turkey, and there was a conflict between the Turkish captain and the Greek authorities over who was responsible for the salvage operation.

For more than 60 years, Turkey had accepted the maritime boundaries in the Aegean, defined by treaties and agreements with the Italians in 1923 and 1932, and ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1947. The boundaries were never challenged by Ankara until that December. But, as Turkey faced a major political crisis with the unexpected electoral success of the Islamic Welfare Party, the Foreign Ministry in Ankara claimed for the first time that Imia was part of the Turkish province of Mugla.

The official response of Greece came on 9 January 1996. The then-Greek Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos, sent a reply to Turkey claiming an indisputable Greek sovereignty over the islets. The dispute was escalated when the Mayor of the Greek island of Kalymnos and a priest landed on the islets on 26 January and raised a Greek flag on the rocky outcrop.

Tensions escalated, and on 27 January Turkish journalists from the daily Hurriyet landed on the largest of the two Imia islets, tore down the blue and white Greek flag and hoisted the red and white star and crescent of Turkey.

Four days later, Turkish troops landed on the smaller rocky outcrop. Tensions heightened as Greek, Turkish and NATO forces sailed to the islets. At dawn on 31 January, a Greek navy helicopter flying over Imia said reported that Turkish troops had landed on the islets. The helicopter then crashed in mysterious circumstances. The crash was blamed on bad weather conditions, but some reports said the weather reports amounted to a mutual cover-up to hide that it was shot down by Turkish fire.

Both Athens and Ankara were accused of concealing what really happened to prevent war. The two countries had been on the brink of war when President Clinton intervened and the Turkish troops withdrew.

The minaret of a mosque in Rhodes (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

At the time, I was the Foreign Desk Editor of The Irish Times and I found myself in the middle of this crisis. I flew to Athens to interview the new Greek Prime Minister, Costas Simitis, his Foreign Minister, Theodoros Pangalos, and other cabinet ministers. A few days later I was one among a small group of about two dozen journalists who travelled from Athens and boarded the NV Nissos in Kos Harbour, close to the Plane Tree of Hippocrates and the Mosque of Hatzi Hassan.

At the time, the NV Nissos offered day trips to Turkey on Saturdays and Sundays, leaving Kos at 9 a.m. and returning at 5 p.m. But this was to be no pleasure cruise. We were reminded of an ever-present fear of an invasion from Anatolia, 5 km across the stretch of water. The local people were talking in terms of ‘when the Turks come’, not ‘if’.

With blue skies and blue seas, it could have been an idyllic summer trip. Apart from goat herds and environmentalists, few people ever bothered to visit the more remote rocks off the coast of Kos, Kalymnos, Kalolymnos and Pserimos. The crew took down the sign reading ‘Turkey’ as we sailed off for the islets of Imia or Limnia, two flat pancakes less than two miles from Kalolymnos, almost 2½ miles from the Turkish island of Cavus, and over three miles from the western-most Turkish coast on the peninsula of Bodrum.

The Greek naval frigate HS Limnos, which had taken part in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, was fresh back from the Adriatic and had offered to take us out to look at the rocks. But before we left, Turkey protested formally and summoned the Greek Ambassador in Ankara, Dimitrios Nezeritis, to warn against the media trip.

It was no idle warning: two days earlier, a Greek coastguard vessel and a Turkish patrol boat had collided in Greek waters, a mile south of Imia.

As we sailed out of Kos, the military tension was palpable and visible. Greek and Turkish jets buzzed overhead sporadically, a Greek coastguard vessel and a navy ship were within sight and, in the distance, we could catch a glimpse of a ship with Turkish naval markings.

Costas Bikas, the Foreign Ministry spokesman from Athens on board the Nissos, insisted there was nothing out of the ordinary about the cruise and that it was none of Ankara’s business. But the Turks made it their business. As the Greek and Turkish jet fighters swooped low over the area, the Turkish foreign ministry took a group of foreign and local journalists out from Bodrum. Once again, there were new Turkish claims to the islets known to the Turks as Kardak – by Defence Minister Oltan Sunguklu and by naval spokesman Ali Kurunahmut, who told cruising journalists: ‘Kardak is a Turkish islet and we are in Turkish waters.’

Trailing both groups were reporters and camera crews from the Greek and Turkish press and television. The crisis had moved from territorial claims and counter claims to cruise and counter cruise for journalists in the Aegean. As Imia faded out of sight, we followed past Pserimos, Kalolymnos, Leros and Kalymnos, through the straits separating Kalymnos and Telendhos, into Pothia, the port harbour of Kalymnos – names that once tripped off the tongues of backpackers in the 1970s.

As we disembarked at the dockside in Pothia, the microphones and cameras crowded into our faces: the foreign media had become the message.

The rocky island of Kalymnos is famous for its traditional sponge fishing; its fame in the past rested on Homer’s reference in the Iliad to the ships from the ‘Kalyndian Islands’ taking part in the Trojan wars. That day, we felt war remained an ever-present threat to the peace of the islanders and their sponge fishers.

The Nissos returned to Kos to prepare for Sunday’s day trippers to Bodrum, and a launch from the Hellenic Coast Guard took us out from the harbour to the navy frigate Limnos, with its crew waiting to take us on to Rhodes. For four hours, we watched the crew tracking Turkish moves in the Aegean sea and skies, before our odyssey came to an end and Rhodes came into sight with its mediaeval castles and palaces, mosques and minarets and three harbours.

Two deer stand at each end of Mandhrki where the Colossos once straddled the entrance to the harbour, with ships passing through its towering legs. A small tug, the Herakles, took us ashore, reminding us of the apt inscription that once graced Colossus, praising the lovely gift of unlettered freedom. ‘For to those who spring from the race of Herakles, dominion is a heritage both on land and sea.’

The crisis was a temporary boost at home to Turkey’s Tansu Ciller as she searched (in vain) for a coalition partner to keep her in power. But it threatened to bring down Costas Simitis, Theodoros Pangalos and their Pasok government in Athens in 1996. Both sides agreed to withdraw their forces from the area around Imia and return to the status quo ante, although Ms Ciller continued to press Turkey’s claims to 3,000 Aegean islands – the sum total of all islands in Greek waters.

After intense pressure from the US, Greek and Turkish government removed their military forces from Imia. The territorial issue has remained unresolved since then. Imia and other islets in the Aegean are considered as ‘grey zones’ of undetermined sovereignty by Turkey.

When I returned to Crete a few weeks later for a family holiday in Piskopiano, my interviews with the Greek media and my appearances on Greek television became a topic of conversation over lunch with Greek friends on the island. Overhead, the sonic booms of fighter jets continued to break the peace of afternoon naps by the pool or on the beach.

When I returned a second time from Greece, The Irish Times published a major feature on my adventures on this day 30 years ago, 6 July 1996. I think the headline ‘Dropping Ankara in Rhodes,’ with its intended pun, was written by the then Design Editor, Andy Barclay.

The casual freedom of land and sea, to hop from one island to the next, is part of the lure of a holiday in the sun in many parts of Greece. But it is a freedom that comes with a price, a freedom that is valued by the local Greeks, and a freedom that is denied 30 years later to many refugees who come in search of it as they make the difficult passage from the coast of Turkey to the islands of the Dodecanese.

Greek and Turkish flags flying on a passenger ferry plying the Aegean between Greek islands and the Turkish coast (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

‘Silence seems to us to to be the worst thing we can do on these issues’

Antifa graffiti in the narrow streets of Rethymnon … the people of Crete have been marking the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Crete and the struggle against fascism (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

There have been two important anniversaries over the past week or two: the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Crete in 1941, and the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day landings in 1944.

Both recall the sacrifices made by so many. It is important remember that both the D-Day landings and the Battle of Crete were key landmarks in the struggle against the anti-democratic, far-right racism that had enslaved most of Europe and that by 1944 threatened too to engulf or overwhelm Britain which had not yet been invaded by the forces of fascism.

The D-Day landings marked the beginning of the end of fascism, for that generation. As the far-right tries to stir up hatred against people fleeing in small boats across the Channel, victimising vulnerable people who are seeking sanctuary from oppression, at home, I remind myself that 82 years ago a flotilla of boats in the Channel on D-Day marked the turning of the tide against racism and the far-right across Europe.

But victory is only of the day, at best of the generation. The anti-democratic and racist far-right must be named, shamed, and stopped once again. The collaborators with fascism in Britain in the 1930s, Oswald Moseley and his blackshirt thugs, were humiliated at the Battle of Cable Street 90 years ago in 1936, but they still had to be locked away for the duration of World War II.

Meanwhile, in the small and petty minds of JD Vance and Pete Hegseth, Europe is under siege, civilisation is collapsing, western values are in retreat, migration is threatening social cohesion, and the future of Europe hangs in the balance.

Pete Hegseth, who wants us all to call the US Defence Department the US War Department, tried during the weekend to warp and twist the meaning and significance of the D-Day landings and to hijack the anniversary for his own twisted and warped political agenda.

It is bewildering that this critique of life in Europe is being advanced by senior politicians from the US, where thousands of children die from gun violence every year, where mass shootings have become routine, where political polarisation is actively encouraged by the regime, and where trust in the institutions of democracy and justice continue to vaporise.

Who gave Pete Hegseth or JD Vance the right to lecture anyone or anywhere in Europe about justice, about human rights, about the risks and dangers of war, about core values and social cohesion?

My grandfather fought in the Gallipoli landings during World War I, and was then sent to Thessaloniki and the Balkan front. He caught malaria, was sent home in 1916, and my father was conceived soon after. But the malaria he caught in northern Greece was incurable, and he died a lonely and frightening death on 21 January 1921, soon after my father’s second birthday, leaving my widowed grandmother and four sons and two daughters.

Ireland was neutral during World War II, as were most European countries until they were invaded. But my father spent much of that war in a cavalry intelligence unit in the reserve army (LDF). He would later recall that when German military personnel, Nazi agents or spies were caught in Ireland, they were sent to prison camps where they spent the rest of the war; when his unit met Irish personnel who were in the British or allied forces and who were on leave for family visits, they ensured they had the fare to return to their units or their bases.

It was clear to my father whose side Ireland was neutral in favour of. He later rejoiced in the acclamation for one of his childhood friends, the journalist and writer Cornelius Ryan (1920-1974), known for his award-winning book The Longest Day: 6 June 1944 D-Day (1959), which was turned into the 1962 film The Longest Day. Both men were in their teens when they visited Rome a few years before World War II began and were shocked then by what they saw of fascism in Mussolini’s Italy.

In their own way, men like these passed on to my generation an acute awareness of the horrors and the sacrifices entailed in war, and an appreciation for others in their generation who risked their lives to save European civilisation from fascism and Nazism. In the previous generation, my grandfather had learned and experienced the horrors of war in Turkey and Greece.

The war graves at Suda Bay near Chania … a reminder of the Battle of Crete and the consequences of dangerous ideologies (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

In a posting last year I recalled the names of the dead from World War II from the extended Comerford families that I have found recorded on memorials and graves by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The 19 members of this extended family I have found to date on Commonwealth War Graves include soldiers in the D-Day landings, merchant seamen torpedoed in Atlantic convoys, brothers and sisters, and prisoners of war of the Japanese in Borneo, Burma (Myanmar), Hong Kong and Japan.

They are buried or commemorated in the Phaleron War Cemetery near Athens, in Normandy, Hong Kong, Thanbyuzayat War Cemetery and the Rangoon Memorial in Burma (Myanmar), Yokohama War Cemetery in Japan, and the Labuan Memorial on Labuan Island off the coast of Sabah in Borneo, Malaysia.

Thomas Matthew Commerford, a trooper, Royal Armoured Corps, 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars, was 36 when he died on 19 August 1944 after the Normandy Landings. He is named in Banneville-la-Campagne War Cemetery and left a widow in Sunbury.

In Europe, we do not need lessons on the consequences of dangerous ideologies. An entire generation was buried after World War I, millions more were buried after World War II. The Holocaust was a European experience, not confined or limited to one country. The Cold War was a European experience that lasted for half a century after World War II.

We have cemeteries, war graves and Holocaust memorials across the entire continent because of wars and because of war-mongers and extreme political ideologies. When Pete Hegseth and JD Vance warn Europe about ideological invasions, we know where the threat comes from today.

In Europe at the weekend we were reminded that are now exposed to a dangerous foreign ideology, one obsessed with culture wars, one that sees compromise as weakness, one that turns every disagreement into an existential battle, one that relies on fear and outrage and creates phantom enemies rather than developing political strategies and government programmes to meet the real needs of real people.

And just as Oswald Moseley became the mouthpiece for Hitler and Mussolini on the streets of Britain in the 1930s, Farage and Lowe have become mouthpieces for the Oval Office 90 years later, the hand-picked voices for Elon Muck, stirring up the baying mobs on the streets and in the towns of Britain.

In his weekend rant, Hegseth claimed: ‘Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not.’ Who was praying to? What does he truly believe in?

My grandfather suffered on the beaches of Gallipoli and in the Bay of Thessaloniki as a victim of ideological war mongering 110 years ago.

The people of Crete still remember 85 years later the consequences of invasions engineered and directed by far-right regimes.

The threat of invasion across Europe today comes not from the frightened families on small boats crossing the Channel or arriving on beaches in southern Europe, or from huddled families crossing borders in the dead of night. The threat to Europe comes today in social media, cable television, political influencers and visiting politicians and moguls who pretend they are the guardians of western civilisation.

When Vance ignores the wishes of Henry Nowak’s families and lectures people here about protecting children and preserving civilisation, I cannot but realise the irony in all of this considering how thousands of children and teenagers are killed in gun violence in the US every year. When he repeats the prattling of Farage and Lowe about ‘two-tier’ policing, I cannot but realise the irony as I recall how ICE kills protesters on the streets of the US without any consideration of due process or accountability and ponder how a pompous president plots to use public funds to reward the rioters who stormed the Capitol violently on 6 January 2021. One of those rioters, Elias Irizarry, has even been given a key security role in Hegseth’s Pentagon.

Democracy survives not through fear but through restraint, not through outrage but through institutions that guarantee justice, not through cultural wars but through coexistence. My grandfather who landed on the Gallipoli beaches and went on to catch malaria in Thessaloniki, those who died in the trenches of the Somme, the brave but frightened boatloads who crossed the Channel to the beaches of Normandy, those buried in mass graves across Europe, each and very one of them continues to remind the rest of us of what happens when politics becomes a crusade and opponents become enemies.

The Nazi spies my father helped to track down and put away for the duration of World War II in supposedly neutral Ireland were searching for collaborators and potential provocateurs among people whose political heirs and descendants today are in the parties led by Farage and Lowe.

Hegseth’s rambling rant at the weekend in Normandy was described by the historian Simon Schema as a ‘special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance. As if the little people’s rage immigration is somehow superior to to the war against the Third Reich and entitles this comic-book nobody to lecture the actual heroes.’ One local resident Colleville-sur-Mer is quoted in The Guardian today as saying: ‘The words must be spoken, he must be called out for who he is, for the values he represents: colonial, warmongering, racist, far-right values. Silence seems to us to be the worst thing we can do on these issues.’

Anti-Nazi graffiti on the streets of Exarchia in Athens … Europe needs no lessons from Washington on the dangers of extreme ideologies and invasions (Photographs: Patrick Comerford)

A guide to some cathedrals, churches and monasteries visited in Greece over 40 years

Collecting my own Greek churches … a souvenir shop in Koutouloufari in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Over the past week or so, I have been sifting through photographs of and postings about cathedrals, churches, chapels and monasteries throughout Greece, putting together this guide to the churches and church sites I have visited, similar to those I have compiled for churches in Milton Keynes and Buckinghamshire, Staffordshire and the Diocese of Lichfield, Oxford, Co Wexford, Co Limerick and Dublin.

I have been a frequent visitor to Greece for almost 40 years, since the late 1980s, when I first stayed in Rethymnon. In time, three churches have become, effectively, my parish churches in Crete: the Church of the Four Martyrs in Rethymnon, and the paired churches in Platanias and Tsesmes. As the list of Greek churches, cathedral, chapels and monasteries I have visited grows, I am surprised how many I have visited, and by this afternoon the number has grown to more than 130.

But I am also surprised by the number of churches I have visited in Greece but have never blogged about or have lost my photographs of.

I compiled a now-lost feature as a guide to the cathedrals and churches of Athens to mark the Athens Olympics in 2004. But over the past 22 years, all those notes and photographs seem to have been lost on old laptop, missing memory sticks, or on memory sticks that no longer seem to remember anything.

Gone too are photographs from my journeys throughout the Peloponnese and past visits to many islands on working trips and family holidays, including islands such as Halki, Ikaria, Kalolimnos, Kalymnos, Kephallonia, Kos, Patmos, Pserimos, Rhodes, Samos, Santorini and Zakynthos.

Missing are notes and photographs from many places in Athens and the Peloponnese, especially from Mystras, with its amazing hill-top Byzantines ruins and from islands such as Ithaka, Kephalonia –including churches that are part of the story of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Kalymnos, Kos, Leros, Patmos, Pserimos, Rhodes, Samos, Symi and Zakynthos. The photographs from Patmos included the Monastery of Saint John and the cave where he wrote the Book of Revelation.

Lost too are photographs from those early visits to Crete from the 1980s, including churches in Vai, Ierapetra and Paliachora, and monasteries such as Gonia Monastery (Μονή Γωνιάς), or the Monastery of Panagia Hodegetria (Μονή της Οδηγήτριας) in Kolymbari, about 26 km outside Chania, with the Orthodox Academy of Crete and its Patristic library – it was the venue for the Pan-Orthodox Synod ten years ago in June 2016, and I may try to recover some of those memories in a posting in the days to come.

To make it easier to find those memories and postings, or to download my photographs of Greek churches, I have put together this guide in recent days. It does not include Greek Orthodox churches and cathedrals I have visited outside Greece; nor are all the churches in this guide Greek Orthodox – some are Anglican and Roman Catholic.

As I recover some more of those lost photographs and memories, or find more of these postings lost in poor labelling, I intend to update this guide and to provide a link in the toolbar at the top of this site.

The tiny Church of Kapnikarea, stranded in the middle of Ermou Street in Athens (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Athens:

1, Agia Dynami Church, Athens (29 Spril 2024)

2, Church of Kapnikarea, Ermou Street (21 August 2017)

3, Saint Paul’s Church (Anglican), Philellenon Street, Athens (25 February 1997) and HERE (25 January 2026)

4, Church of Aghios Philippos (Apostle Philip), Monastiraki (21 August 2017)

Every visitor to Corfu wants a picture postcard photograph of Vlacherna, with its convent and church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Corfu:

Cathedrals:

5, The Cathedral of the Virgin Spiliotissas and Saint Vlassis and Saint Theodora, Corfu (5 September 2019) and HERE (1 August 2021)

6, Achilleion Palace chapel, Gastouri (4 August 2021)

7, (former) Church of the Annunziata (Roman Catholic), Corfu (29 April 2020)

8, Church of Saint Eleftherios and Saint Anna, Corfu 6 September 2019) and HERE (3 August 2021)

9, (former) Saint George’s Church (Anglican garrison church), Corfu (7 August 2021)

10, Saint George, Aghios Georgios (29 April 2020)

11, Holy Trinity Church (Anglican church), Corfu (4 September 2019) and HERE (7 August 2021)

12, Church of the Panagia Kassopitra, Kassiopi (4 September 2019) and HERE (5 August 2021)

13, Church of Panagia Mandrakina, Corfu (6 September 2019) and HERE (29 April 2020)

14, Church of Saint Spyridon, Corfu (25 August 2019) and HERE (2 August 2021)

15, Church of Saint Spyridon, Palaiokastritsa (6 August 2021)

16, Vlacherna church and convent (3 September 2019) and HERE (29 April 2020)

Saint Nicholas Chapel, on an islet off the coast of Crete at Georgioupoli (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Crete:

Aghios Nikolaos:

17, Saint Nicholas, Aghios Nikolaos (5 December 2022)

Argiroupolis:

18, Church of Aghia Dynami, Argiroupolis (8 July 2017)

Chania:

Cathedrals:

18, Cathedral of the Panaghia Trimartiri, Chania (19 June 2018)

19, Cathedral of the Assumption (Roman Catholic), Chania

20, Aghia Magdalini, Dagli Street, Chalepa (2 July 22017)

Élos:

21, Agios Ioannis Theologos, Élos (17 July 2016) and HERE (19 April 2020)

22, Aghios Nikolas, Élos (19 April 2020) and HERE (5 Deceember 2022)

Georgioupoli:

23, Analipsi Church, Georgioupoli (14 June 2018)

24, Saint Barbara, Georgioupoli (14 June 2018)

25, Chapel of the Prophet Elijah (16 June 2018)

26, Feriniki Chapel (16 June 2018)

27, Chapel of Aghios Nikolaos, Georgioupoli (9 July 2017) also HERE (20 June 2018) and HERE (5 December 2022)

Gramvousa:

28, Chapel of the Twelve Apostles, Gramvousa Bay (8 July 2016) and HERE (19 April 2020)

Hóra Sfakíon

29, Searching for the 100 churches and chapels of Hóra Sfakíon (17 June 2018)

Saint Minas Cathedral in Iraklion is one of the largest and most impressive churches in Greece (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Iraklion:

Cathedrals:

30, Saint Minas Cathedral, Iraklion (20 April 2025) and HERE (24 July 2017)

31, (former) Saint Mark’s Church (former cathedral), Eleftheriou Venizelou Square (25 May 2025)

32, Saint Titus Church (former cathedral) (18 May 2025)

Churches and chapels:

33, Saint Andreas Church, Nikolaos Plastiras Street (25 May 2025)

34, Saint Catherine of Sinai, Iraklion (8 May 2021) and HERE (3 September 2017)

35, Saint Dimitrios Church, Marineli Street (25 May 2025)

36, Saint Dimitrios Church, Ikarou street (25 May 2025)

37, Holy Cross Church (Roman Catholic), Iraklion (23 May 2026)

38, Church of Saint Matthew of the Sinaites, Iraklion (4 May 2025)

39, Saint Minas Church, Iraklion (20 April 2025)

40, Saint Peter’s Church (Saint Peter and Saint Paul), Iraklion (11 May 2025)

See also:

41, The Cretan School of Icons and its contribution to Western Art, public lecture (27 June 2009)

Kalamitsi Alexandrou:

42, Church of Aghia Triada, Kalamitsi Alexandrou (22 June 2018)

Kourtaliotiko Gorge:

43, Agia Kyriaki Chapel (not available yet)

The church bell in the Byzantine-style Church of Aghios Vasilios in Koutouloufári, in the hills above Hersonissos in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Koutouloufári:

44, Aghios Vasilios, Koutouloufári (4 July 2010), also HERE (7 May 2021), HERE (22 April 2023) and HERE (24 April 2024)

Maroulas:

45, Church of Aghia Anna (4 September 2016)

46, The double Church of Aghios Nikolaos and Aghios Antonios (4 September 2016)

47, The Despotiko, summer residence of the Archbishop of Rethymnon (4 September 2016)

Panormos:

48, (former) Basilica of Aghia Sophia (3 July 2017) and HERE (25 April 2025)

49, Church of Saint Agathopodos, Panormos (25 April 2024)

50, Church of the Ascension and Saint George, Panormos (5 May 2021) and HERE (21 April 2025)

51, Graveyard chapel, Panormos (25 April 2024)

The Church of the Transfiguration rises high above the village of Piskopianó (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Piskopianó:

52, Church of the Transfiguration, Piskopianó (24 April 2024)

53, (former) Church of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary, Piskopianó (24 April 2024)

54, (former) Church of Saint Dimitrios (24 April 2024)

55, Graveyard chapel, Piskopianó (24 April 2024)

The Church of the Four Martyrs is the largest church in Rethymnon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Rethymnon:

Cathedrals:

56, The Cathedral of the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple, Mitropolis Square (29 March 2021), and also HERE (4 May 2021) and HERE (27 April 2025)

57, (former Venetian) Cathedral of Saint Nicholas, the Fortezza (8 October 2021)

58, Aghios Anargyron, Koumoundourou Street (29 April 2024)

59, Saint Anthony’s Church, Mitropolis Square (17 January 2026) and HERE (3 October 2021)

60, Saint Anthony of Padua Church (Roman Catholic), Mesolongíou Street (11 January 2018) and HERE (10 October 2021)

61, Saint Barbara’s Church, Aghia Barbara Street (11 June 2018), also HERE (6 Seprember 2021)

62, (former) Saint Catherine’s Church, the Fortezza (6 October 20221)

63, Saint Constantine and Saint Helena Church (28 September 2021) and HERE (27 April 2025)

64, (former) Corpus Christi Chapel, beside the Nerantze Mosque (6 July 2012) and HERE (9 October 2021)

65, Church of the Four Martyrs, Tessaron Martiron Square (3 May 2021) and HERE (27 Apri;l2025)

66, (former) Saint Francis Church, now the The Archaeological Museum of Rethymnon, Ethnikís Antistaseos Street (4 October 2021) and HERE (27 April 2025)

67, Saint George’s Church, Aghios Gheorghíou Street (1 OHERE (23 April 2024)

68, Saint George’s Church, Egeou Street (23 April 22024)

69, (former) Saint Lazarus Church, Patelárou Street (8 July 2012)

70, (former) Santa Maria Church, Ethnikis Antistaseos (Nerantze Mosque), Rethymnon (27 April 2025)

71, Saint Mary Magdalene Church, Nea Magnesia (22 July 2017)

72, Mikri Panaghia (Church of Our Lady of the Angels), Nikifórou Foká Street (30 September 2019), and HERE (8 July 2012)

73, Saint Nektarios Church, Ioannou Melissinou street, Rethymnon (27 September 2021)

74, Saint Nektarios Church, Tsemes (19 April 2023)

75, Saint Nicholas Church, Priskosoridi street and Emmanouil Kefalogianni avenue (6 December 2023)

76, (former) Church of Aghia Sophia, Koronaíou Street, Rethymnon (6 July 2012)

77, (former) Church of Saint Theodore or Aghios Theodoros Trachinás, the Fortezza (7 October 2021)

78, Aghia Triada (Church of the Holy Trinity), Platanias (5 October 2021) and HERE (19 April 2023)

See also:

79, The former Episcopal Palace, the Fortezza, Rethymnon (8 October 2021)

80, The Bishop’s Palace, Mousoúrou Street, and the Diocesan Church Museum, Rethymnon (8 July 2012)

81, ‘The Bishop’s House’, Rethymnon (1 October 2021)

82, Greek roadside shrines (4 July 2016)

Spinalonga:

83, The Church of Saint Panteleímon (4 October 2010)

Kastellórizo:

84, Cathedral of Saint Constantine and Saint Helena, Kastellórizo (6 November 2011)

85, Church of Saint George of the Well, Kastellórizo (6 November 2011)

The blue-domed churches of Santorini in a poster … poster and picture-postcard images of Greek churches (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Santorini:

86, Saint Anastasis Church and the churches of Santorini (30 March 2014), also HERE (9 June 2017), HERE (4 September 2017) and HERE (30 November 2017)

Thessaloniki:

Cathedrals:

87, Cathedral of Saint Gregory Palamas (26 July 2021) and HERE (18 April 2020)

88, Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Frangon Street (18 April 2020)

Churches and chapels:

89, Church of Óssios Davíd (18 April 2020)

90, Church of Aghios Dimitrios (27 July 2021), also HERE (26 October 2020) and also HERE (18 April 2020)

91, Church of the Prophítis Ilías (18 April 2020)

92, Church of Saint Menas (18 April 2020)

93, Church of the Panagia Acheiropoietos (7 April 2018), also HERE (28 July 2021) and HERE (18 April 2020)

94, Church of Panaghía Chalkéon (29 July 2021) and HERE (18 April 2020)

95, Church of Panagia Deksia (31 July 2021) also HERE (18 April 2020)

96, Church of Aghios Panteleimon (18 April 2020)

97, The Rotunda Church, Aghios Georgios (25 July 2021) and HERE (18 April 2020)

98, Church of the Saviour or the Church of the Transfiguration (9 April 2018), also HERE (30 July 2021) and HERE (18 April 2020)

99, Church of Aghia Sophia (18 April 2020)

The Monastery of Arkadi, near Rethymnon, is the best-known monastery in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Monasteries in Greece:

Crete:

100, Monastery of Saint Anastasia, Tsesmes (30 June 2021) and HERE (4 July 2016)

101, Arkadi Monastery (5 July 2012), also HERE (11 July 2017) and HERE (1 May 2021)

102, Moni Arsanios (Saint George), Pagalohori (29 June 2021) and HERE (3 July 2016)

103, (former) Saint Barbara’s Monastery (Kara Musa Pasha Mosque), Rethymnon (1 July 2021) also and HERE (24 August 2014)

104, Capuchin Friary, Chania ()

105, Panagia Chalevi, near Chromonastiri (2 Seotember 2013)

106, Chryssoskalítíssa (the Golden Step) (19 June 2023) and HERE (30 May 2024))

107, Agia Irini, near Rethymnon (10 October 2013), also HERE (25 August 2014) and HERE (27 June 2021)

108, Gonia Monastery (Panagia Hodegetria), Kolymvari (not available yet)

109, Saint George, Karydi (21 June 2018)

110, Saint John the Theologian, Preveli (28 August 2014) and HERE (28 June 2021)

111,The monastic Church of Saint Paisios, Damnoni (19 September 2021) and HERE (7 November 2021)


112,The monastic Chapel of Saint Savvas, Preveli (25 May 2026)

113, Aghios Panteleimon, Adele (3 July 2016)

114, Agia Triada Tsangarolon, Chania (31 May 2024)

A monastery built on a rock top in Meteora (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Meteora:

115, All Saints or Varlaam (27 August 2019) and HERE (6 October 2019)

116, Great Meteoron (27 August 2019) and HERE (6 October 2019)

117, Holy Trinity (27 August 2019) and HERE (6 October 2019)

118, Rousanou or Saint Barbara (27 August 2019) and HERE (6 October 2019)

119, Saint Nicholas Anapafsas, near Kastraki (27 August 2019) and HERE (6 October 2019)

The katholikon or main church in the Monastery of Vatopedi on Mount Athos (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Mount Athos:

120, Mount Athos on the Chalkidiki peninsula (19 June 2004), also HERE (2 September 2018), and HERE (24 April 2020)

121, Dionysiou (2 September 2018), also HERE (24 April 2020)

122, Docheiariou (2 September 2018), also HERE (24 April 2020)

123, Esphigmenou (2 September 2018) also HERE (24 April 2020)

124, Gregoriou (2 September 2018), also HERE (24 April 2020)

125, Saint Panteleimon (2 September 2018) also HERE (24 April 2020)

126, Saint Paul (2 September 2018), also HERE (24 April 2020)

127, Simonopetra (2 September 2018), also HERE (24 April 2020)

128, Vatopedi (19 June 2004), also HERE (24 April 2020) and HERE (1 April 2021)

129, Xenophontos (2 September 2018) also HERE (24 April 2020)

130, Xeropotamou (2 September 2018) also HERE (24 April 2020)

131, Zographou or Saint George the Zograf Monastery also HERE (24 April 2020)

132, The Skete of Mount Athos, including Kelli Ayiou Modestou, Skiti Monoxilites, and Metochi Chourmitsis (2 September 2018), also HERE (24 April 2020)

The Monastery of Vlatadon in the hills above Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Thessaloniki:

133, The Monastery of Vlatádon, Thessaloniki (9 April 2020), also HERE (18 April 2020), and HERE (29 April 2021)

See Also:

134, The offices of Mount Athos, Egnatia Street, Thessaloniki (2 September 2018) and HERE (18 April 2020)

135, The Greek word εκκλησία (ekklesia), Church (13 August 2025)

136, The Greek words ναός (naos) and ἱερός (ieros), Church (19 September 2021)

137, The Greek words μοναστήριον (monastērion), ‘a monastery,’ (21 August 2025)

A roadside shrine near the Sunset Taverna in Rethymnon, after sunset behind the Fortezza (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Lastupdated: 25 May 2026