© 2004 Nikos Pachtas, All Rights Reserved.
Most churches in Greece are relatively small buildings (comparing to west European cathedrals) mainly for two reasons. The first is that a lot of churches were built from families or groups of people, who could not afford to build a bigger church. The second is that all churches build between 11th and 19th century were built during Turkish occupation (or in the case of Corfu, during Venetian, French and English occupation) and although Greeks were allowed to build churches they were not allowed to build a church taller than a Turkish monument. This led to peculiar architectural solutions with a lot of churches being built in a lower ground level, or being built in a way that their external will not look like a church.