Saint George

As we enter Oia, we see the church of Saint George (Agios Georgios), one of the two parish churches of the settlement. (The second is the church of the Virgin Mary [Panagia] Platansi). The church of Saint George is also called Perivolas (since it was built in the Perivolas neighborhood at the beginning of the 19th century), as well as being referred to as Apanomeritis (since Oia was once called Apano Meria). The church housed the holy icon of Saint George that an ancestor of the Nomikos shipping family brought to Oia from Constantinople. The picture was silver-plated in 1869. In the catastrophic earthquakes of 1956, the church was almost flattened, but it was completely restored in 1966-67 by ship owner Loukas Nomikos, whose bust we see in the courtyard of the church.