Churches and monasteries, symbols of faith and cultural heritage, constitute an integral part of local as well as general history. They are not only monuments of culture but also living presences that can “speak” about the past, the present and eternity, as well as about the place and its people.
For behind the buildings and works of art stands the human being with their anxieties, their beliefs, their expectations, their creativity, their toil, but also the desperate search for contact between the created and the Uncreated.
During the period of Ottoman rule in Almopia, the inhabitants, with the help of the ecclesiastical administration, built churches and monasteries in order to practice religious worship, continue centuries-old traditions, express their feelings, and remain united as a community under the adverse conditions created by the conqueror.
Using the same materials of nature, people build their homes and their place of prayer and worship. The austere architectural form of the churches and the scant light that diffuses inside them, combined with the iconographic decoration, exude a spirituality inseparably linked to Orthodox ecclesiology.
