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 katontapiliani (Our lady of the hundred doors) is the holy place of Paros which is linked to the history and myths of Byzantium. Tradition and history state that the church began life in the reign of Constantine the Great (280 - 337 A.D.) or Justinian (527 - 565). After its restoration in 1959, this church, the brightest jewel in the crown of Orthodoxy in teh Aegean, became the third most important Christian building in Greece, after the Panayia Akheiropoietos and St. Demetrios in Thessaloniki. |
 ccording to tradition when the mother of the emperor Constantine the Great set-off for the Holy Land, with the intention to find the True Cross, a storm oblidged her to make a halt in Paros. |
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| On her way to the ancient town she found one of the first chapels of the new religion dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin and stopped to pray. There she promissed that if she found the True Cross and returned safely to her home, she would have a fine church built on that spot in Paros. The church stands in the north-east corner of the town of Paros, and it was built on the remains of temples dedicated to Hercules and to poet Archilochus. It is a cruciform Basilica with a dome, entered through the narthex, which has three doors into the main body of the church. | |
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 he form of the church today dates from the 6th century. The sculpture which decorates the church today is both ancient and Christian. There are architaves, door posts and other building materials from the ancient temple of Demeter at the harbour of Parikia. Inside the church there is also the Byzantine museum which houses some marvellous icons and also church relics, wood carvings and other ecclesiastical objects from the Byzantine period. |
| The oldest wall-painting still exant (in the baptistry) dates from the 11th or 12 th c. and show St. George. There are also many old icons in the church, including a Virgin which is traditionally supposed to have been painted by the Apostle Luke. | |
| Photos and text taken from "Paros - Antiparos" (Toubis Editions) |  |
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