In the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth century, Castellorizo, the easternmost inhabited island of Greece, was home to one of the richest and most flourishing mercantile and seafaring communities in the Mediterranean. Loukas Santrapé, a Castellorizan businessman settled in Egypt, was a major benefactor of the island. He founded the Santrapeian Urban School and in 1902 funded the building of a magnificent church dedicated to Saint George, at the locality Choraphia. The church was founded on the site of an earlier one dedicated to Saint George ‘tou Psiphiou’ or ‘tou Malaxou’, which had been constructed in 1637 but was demolished in 1902. Its architect is said to have been Panos Diakostamatis from Samos. The project was cut short in 1911, with the death of Loukas Santrapé. In 1994 the church was declared a listed monument by the Ministry of Culture.
This majestic church of composite four-columned cross-in-square type with dome, is a representative example of the late Greek-Byzantine style of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its size is impressive (25.4 m x 15.8 m, with maximum height approx. 20.5 m). The internal surfaces of the walls and the vaults are coated completely in the technique of drawn plasterwork, with preliminary drawings for painted imitation marble revetment in places. The iconostasis is built, while the marble ambo (pulpit) and the episcopal throne are products of a workshop in Smyrna, of the early twentieth century. Depicted inside the dome is depicted a rare type of Pantocrator, the ‘Ancient of Days’. The Non-profit Civil Company AEGEAS, conscious of the importance of the church of Saint George as a landmark of Orthodoxy at the eastern edge of the Mediterranean and recognizing the various problems of the building fabric and the aesthetic depreciation of the church due to wear and tear of the materials, environmental factors, earlier interventions and lack of conservation, decided to undertake the task of completing and enhancing the church in its entirety. The project began in 2020, with the preparation of all the necessary studies and with the aim of restoring the church, giving it the aspect it would have had in the early twentieth century. The implementation of the approved study proved to be complicated and difficult, on the one hand because of the location of Castellorizo, and on the other because different needs had to be confronted: the completion of the construction, the preservation-conservation of as much as possible of the authentic features, but also the full functional upgrading of the church as place of worship for the local community.
Works included reinforcing the bearing capacity of the building, reconstructing the roof, completely rebuilding the bell tower, removing later plaster coatings and conserving the original stucco of the exterior, as well as the painted decoration of imitation marble dado in the interior and the stylistic features on the façades. A new marble floor was laid in the ground floor of the church and the wooden staircase and wooden floor of the women’s gallery were conserved. All the old marble features in the church were conserved and all the icons of the iconostasis. Last, new ecclesiastical equipment, furniture, light fitments and a large central chandelier were installed. In the church grounds, the two entrance staircases were redesigned and faced with marble, as were the immediate surrounds. The square in which the church stands was redesigned too, in order to enhance the monument and facilitate the circulation of pedestrians. New lighting was installed, the adjacent ossuary was renovated and the cenotaph restored.
