The church of Saint George stands on the northwest side of Makronisos, very close to the coastal cliffs. It is dedicated to Saint George the Dragon-slayer, as is obvious to the visitor from the marble plaque with relief figure of the saint, incorporated in the wall above the central entrance. According to oral information, construction of this small stone-built church was completed in 1890. The earlier history of the area is exceptionally interesting. Michael Choniates, Byzantine scholar and Metropolitan of Athens (1182-1204), refers to the existence of a humble monastery of Saint George at Makri and regrets that he had not evacuated it, so that pirates would have one less reason to use the island as a lair. There is testimony of the presence of monks on the island in 1675, by the Frenchman André Georges Guillet in his book Athénes ancienne et nouvelle (en 1669) et l’ estat present de l’empire des Turcs, Paris, 1676 (third ed.). The present church of Saint George is perhaps what survived from the monastery. The French traveller Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, who spent the night of 7 November 1700 on the island, states that he had read in ‘Pliny’ that a tempest had cut off Makronisos from Euboea.
There is also a chapel of the Virgin (Theotokos) on Makronisos, which too was built on top of the ruins of an ancient temple. This church is a basilica of simple rectangular plan (9.24 m x 6.15 m), with sanctuary conch on the east side. The surrounding space is limited only in front of the entrance, which is emphasized by a small paved area and a stone bench around it. The formal features of the church are spare with Neoclassical traits, apparent mainly in the door and window frames, particularly of the entrance, in the motifs of the floor tiles with the meander pattern and central composition (rosette), as well as in the carving of the wooden iconostasis, ornamented with vine leaves. Possibly the Neoclassical vein of the motifs is influenced by the corresponding compositions in the two larger Neoclassical churches in Lavrion, of Saint Andrew and Saint Paraskevi. There are no wall-paintings in the church interior and the decoration is confined to portable icons. The despotic icons and the patronal icon of Saint George were executed in Athens in 1891, ‘with the care of Ioannis A. Kosmopoulos’, while the Last Supper, on the entablature of the iconostasis, is a work by Stavros Pisani, painted in 1893, as probably was the whole set of the Dodecaorton.
There are no paintings on the ceiling either. The wooden beams of the roof frame are visible, while there is a wooden false ceiling of traditional type with planks and joint covers. With the donation from the Non-profit Civil Company AEGEAS, the church, which comes under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of Kea, and its grounds were totally restored in 2013-2014. The symbolic opening ceremony (thyranoixia) took place on 10 May 2014, in the presence of the Most Reverend Metropolitan of Syros, Tenos, Andros, Kea, Melos and Mykonos Dorotheos II.
