These holy places are answer to my prayers
As you read this I will be en route to Crete, back to Paleochora, the small town in the south-west that I first discovered back in the early 1980s. I’ll only be on the island for a few nights, just a quick hop to soak up the last of the Cretan sunshine and hospitality for another year. I know Paleochora so well and I still cling to the same rituals when I visit. And that’s why, on my first morning, you’ll always find me walking to the top of the town, ducking in under the wedding-cake style bell-tower and heading on into the beautiful Church of Evangelistria.
I’m not religious, but I love visiting churches when I am away anywhere, and the whole Greek Orthodox vibe I find absolutely fascinating. Even in this small parish church in Paleochora the frescoes are stunning.
It was always a bit of a thing in my family as I was growing up - the visiting churches habit. In fact we used to joke that you could deposit my father in a church somewhere, leave him there for a couple of days, and return to find that he had only moved a few yards along one wall so fixated was he with reading every single plaque and examining every statue or piece of art in sight.
I have a kind of ‘rule’ when I’m abroad: ‘never pass an open church’. Maybe I’ll just dive in for a minute for a quick scan of the interior. Maybe I’ll spend some time wandering around looking at the art. Or maybe I’ll just rest awhile, watching the worshipful, and listening to the music.
Many of my travel memories involve churches – standing with my then infant son in one of the tiniest churches I have ever been in, again in Crete, this time in the mountain village of Zaros; lighting a candle for my Uncle Pat, a man of great religious faith, in the church in Peccioli in Tuscany, Pat having died suddenly in New Zealand while we were in Italy; lighting another candle in the San Petronio basilica in Bologna just last year when my lovely Uncle Joe passed away at home in Co. Derry; standing gobsmacked on the ice-covered pavement outside the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood in St Petersburg, the multi-domed, multi-coloured exterior like a beacon flashing ‘look at me’ amid the white and grey winter streetscape of that fascinating Russian city.
Another memorable experience was just last autumn in the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi – the scale of the building, the beauty of the architecture, the feel of the world’s largest hand-knotted carpet under my bare feet. I love mosques, always have. If I could magic myself right now to a mosque anywhere in the world it would be to the Sultanahmet in Istanbul. Although this is the Blue Mosque and therefore a tourist magnet, I have always found, over the years, that the minute I enter it, a profound and inexplicable sense of peace descends.
When I think of other memorable places of worship I would have to include the Imperial Chapel in the Hapsburg Palace in Vienna – not for the church itself, particularly, but for the angelic voices of the Vienna Boys Choir. And while Notre Dame is, of course, a must-see in Paris, I prefer the stunning Sainte-Chapelle with its gorgeous stained glass, biblical-scene windows. And for the extraordinary light that streams into the upper chapel on a sunny day, illuminating the space spectacularly.
But in the end it’s my experiences of smaller churches that stay most vividly with me. And right up there are the Byzantine gems that are dotted around the Troodos mountains in Cyprus. These ten churches are simply extraordinary, looking for all the world like small farm sheds from the outside. You generally have to find the keyholder to gain entry but, boy, is it worth the effort.
I’ll never forget the tiny Archangel Michael church in the mountain village of Pedoulas. Having eventually tracked down the keyholder who was having his lunch at the time, we then followed him through the village until we arrived at the tiny, nondescript building. He unlocked the door, and my husband and I followed him inside. So far so ordinary. Then he flicked a light switch. I actually heard my husband’s intake of breath. The walls – every inch of them – were covered with ancient, 15th century frescoes.
My father would have been there for a week.
•Listen in on Thursdays as Ros talks travel with Ivan Yates on The Hard Shoulder, Newstalk 106108fm, 4pm to 7pm.