The bell tower
The tallest in Corfu โ it shows you the way from any lane.
Piotrus โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท Dietmar Rabich โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Dietmar Rabich โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท Dietmar Rabich โ CC BY-SA 4.0
**The most important place in Corfu to the people who live there** โ not the finest building or the largest, but the church that explains the town if you want to understand it. It was built in **1590**, and its **red-tiled bell tower is the tallest on the island** and your orientation point in every lane: however lost you are, look for it. Inside โ in a silver casket in a side chapel โ lies **Saint Spyridon**, Corfu's patron. His story is the reason for the place's standing: **he is credited with saving the island four times**, from plague, from famine and from Ottoman siege, and each has its own **annual procession** in which the casket is still carried through the streets today. The ceiling is **gilded and painted**, the hanging silver lamps are dense, and the interior is dark, warm and smells of incense. โ But it is **a working church full of worshippers**, not a monument โ and that changes how you go in.
The tallest in Corfu โ it shows you the way from any lane.
Painted panels with dense silver lamps hanging beneath.
The silver casket, where Corfiots stand in silence.
Agiou Spyridonos, 49100 Corfu, Greece
**With the same courtesy you would expect of a visitor to your own mosque โ and the rules are simple and clear.** โ **Do**: go in quietly, silence your phone, cover shoulders and knees (men and women alike), walk at the sides rather than up the middle of the nave, and **stand back and simply look** โ no religious act is asked of you and nobody expects one. โ **Do not**: photograph at all (it is forbidden and enforced), walk in front of anyone praying, sit in seats set aside for worshippers during a service, talk even in a whisper inside the chapel, or go in during the height of a service if you can wait. โ **And the reassuring part**: Greek Orthodox churches are **entirely used to visitors of every faith**, and nobody will ask about yours โ respect is the only condition.
**A 4th-century Cypriot bishop โ but his connection to Corfu formed a thousand years after his death.** When **Constantinople fell in 1453**, his relics were smuggled west and reached Corfu in **1456**, where they have stayed. Since then Corfiots have **credited him with four great deliverances**: from a famine, from two outbreaks of plague, and from the **great Ottoman siege of 1716** โ popular account has him appearing in the storm that scattered the fleet. โ That is why he is present in daily life rather than only in church: **"Spiros" is among the commonest men's names on the island**, four annual processions close the streets, and shops and boats carry his name. โ As a visitor, understand this: walking into the church you are not entering a historic monument but **a living centre of collective identity**.
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