Chapel of Panagia Astathkiotissa

Feast day: Thursday of diakainisimos (Bright Week)

The chapel of Panagia of Astathkia is the only surviving building from the village of Stathkia. Testimonies that the village existed until the second half of the 16th century are to be found in the Venetian archives. The village was abandoned during the difficult years of the Turkish rule of the island (before 1825). The chapel is a single-aisled vaulted building, 9.75 m long with a semicircular apse that extends for another 1.30 m, and 5.06 m wide. It has two entrances, one on the west and another on the south side of the church, measuring 1.13 m and 1.18 m respectively. The pointed arch is supported by two reinforcing arches. In the chapel are preserved frescoes dating to the second half of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century and belong to two different styles. The first group of frescoes presents features associated with the Italo-Byzantine or Cypriot Renaissance style (i.e. depiction of Virgin Pantanassa in the conch of the apse and scene of the Crucifixion on the western wall), while the remaining frescoes echo the Byzantine tradition of the time. The church is a listed monument (Table B) and celebrates on Thursday of diakainisimos (Bright Week).