The Panagia, the church on the rock

The church was once the katholikon of a convent. A marble inscription of 1687 records a renovation, and it took its present form in a rebuilding that began in 1816 and was finished in 1821. Its icon of the Virgin is woven into the island's stories of pirates and legends.

Above the church, on the height called Palaiokastro, stood the acropolis of ancient Pholegandros, and the pieces of the old sanctuary are everywhere: a carved Byzantine relief of the Mother of God, an ancient base with a Greek inscription by the door, a marble water basin, and the torso of an ancient statue, probably Roman, set into the wall of the bell tower.

Every Easter the icon leaves the church. On Easter Sunday it is carried down to Chora and from house to house; at sunset it is handed to the people of Ano Meria, who walk it to their church of Agios Georgios; on Easter Monday it visits every house in Ano Meria and returns to the Kastro for the night; on the Tuesday it goes to Petousis, Livadi and Karavostasis, blessing the houses and the caiques in the harbour, and, weather permitting, sails briefly round the nearby bays, before it is brought back up to its rock.