Byzantine Museum of Ekatontapyliani

You pass through the arched gateway of Ekatontapyliani in Parikia and the noise of the harbor fades behind you. The light changes, grows older. In the shadow of the wings of this early Christian complex, where the marble still holds the coolness of night, a small door opens. Beyond it, no ordinary museum awaits. What awaits is the memory of an entire island, gathered icon by icon.

A church that became an ark

Ekatontapyliani is not simply the church of Paros. It is one of the most significant early Christian monuments in the entire Mediterranean, a sanctuary that has stood almost without interruption since the 4th century. Across so many centuries of worship, a treasury accumulated around its sanctuary: icons, liturgical vessels, wood carvings, heirlooms passed from hand to hand, from generation to generation.

At some point it became clear that these objects were not only sacred — they were also historical. Someone had to view them through the eye of a keeper, not only that of a believer. And that person appeared early, at the start of the last century.

The priest who became a collector

The story of the collection begins with one man: the archimandrite and parish priest of Ekatontapyliani, Georgios Phil. Skaramangas (1867–1944). On his own initiative he began gathering the scattered heirlooms — first those that had lain for centuries within the church itself, then icons he collected, for the most part, from the churches of Parikia.

Picture him walking through the narrow lanes, entering small chapels, recognizing beneath the smoke of candles a Byzantine figure at risk of being lost. The collection grew steadily, sometimes through donations from the faithful, sometimes through his own patient gathering. It was, in the truest sense, an act of rescue.

The archaeologist and the first museum

Around 1931 the collection found the form it deserved. The Parian archaeologist Eirini Varoucha-Christodoulopoulou (1896–1979) undertook to organize it scientifically. Thus the first “Byzantine Museum of Paros” was born, housed in the ground-floor cells of the northern wing of Ekatontapyliani.

It is a detail that speaks volumes about Paros: the island that gave the world the celebrated lychnites, the translucent marble of ancient sculptures, also gave one of the first women archaeologists to care for its Byzantine heritage. In 1936 Father Georgios was even appointed honorary curator of antiquities — official recognition for work that had begun out of love.

A relic is not preserved merely behind glass; it is preserved when someone is found to see it as a legacy for those who come after.A free rendering of the spirit of Ekatontapyliani’s first keepers

Silence, and then a second life

With the death of Father Georgios Skaramangas, the museum closed. The icons were withdrawn, the cells fell silent. The story could have ended there — as so many efforts end when the person who kept them standing is gone.

Yet it did not end. Later, during the tenure of the late Metropolitan Epiphanios, the collection was moved to three cells on the upper floor of the building’s southern wing and found its public once more. Today’s Byzantine Museum, open to visitors, houses a portion of these heirlooms of Ekatontapyliani — living proof that care, when passed from generation to generation, is never truly lost.

What you will see, what you will feel

You will stand before Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons, wood carvings and sacred vessels that once gleamed in the light of oil lamps. Each icon carries not only the figure it depicts, but also its own journey: the small chapel it came from, the hand that saved it, the eyes that once venerated it.

Stepping back outside, the light of Parikia strikes you again — the same Mediterranean light that has bathed these figures for centuries. And you understand that Paros is not only golden beaches and a cosmopolitan harbor. It is also this quiet, persistent love for what deserves to be kept. Come and discover it; you will leave richer than you arrived.