It is a majestic church, which draws your attention immediately, but forces you to look again and again, in order to conceive its impressive form. Quite larger than most churches in Limassol’s mountains, built with local stone on the surface of its outer walls, the church of Panayia Eleousa in Agros is a temple that was crucial for the course of the village.
The temple was constructed in 1909 on the ruins of an older temple, part of the Monastery of Great Agros, which was still standing until 1894. It is approximately 30 meters long and 15 meters wide. The height of its dome reaches up to 15 meters and its outer walls are 1,5-meter thick. The church can host up to 1500 people. The altar is the same as the one in the original temple of the monastery.
The icon of Panayia Eleousa was brought by the 40 monks who fled the Asia Minor to survive the iconoclastic conflicts during the Byzantine Era, to settle in the area where Agros village is located today. The monks founded the Monastery around which this large village was created. The icon of Panayia Eleousa was painted, according to religious sources, by Apostle Luke. The interior of the church is plain and there are murals merely on 2 walls, while the wooden front of the altar hosts 15 icons dated back in 1930.
Each year the church receives thousands of pilgrims, as the icon of the considered miraculous. The chapel next to the church was built in 1990, reminiscent of the monastery, and the icon is kept in it. There are also other items saved there from the times when the monastery was operating, such as a part of the altar, the icon of Christ, more icons, some holy books, utensils etc., thus the chapel is somewhat of a museum of the ecclesiastic history of the village.
A wooden box is kept in the church, with the bones of some of the monks that founded the monastery in Agros.
5.32 km
5.45 km
