Diagram by Greece Trips. Free to reuse with credit - CC BY 4.0.
How it came to be there
A nun reported visions of the Virgin asking that the ground be dug. In January 1823 a workman’s pickaxe struck a wooden icon of the Annunciation on the site.
The church was raised over the spot, and by the church’s own account the building work on the complex ran on until 1880. It has been a focus of Greek Orthodox devotion ever since.
What you actually see on the great feast
On the great feast, that devotion is physical.
Some pilgrims cover the last stretch on their knees, climbing a carpeted route uphill from the port to the shrine. After the liturgy, the icon is carried down to the harbour in a naval procession.
What a visitor witnesses is that practice - the slow ascent, the crowds, the procession - not a promise of anything beyond it. This page describes what happens, and leaves what it means where it belongs.
The red runner up the steps is the route pilgrims climb, and it stays down on ordinary evenings too, not only on the feast days.
The four dates, named by the church itself
The church names all four:
- 15 August, the Dormition - the great one, and the single busiest day on the island.
- 25 March, the Annunciation and the church’s name-day, which is also Greek Independence Day.
- 30 January, the finding of the icon.
- 23 July, the anniversary of Saint Pelagia’s vision.
If you are coming for the pilgrimage, those are the days. If you are not, they are the days to avoid - the week around 15 August is the pilgrimage peak and it changes the whole island.
Visiting outside the peaks
Outside those peaks the church is calm, open to visitors and free to enter, and modest dress - shoulders and knees covered - is expected.
That is the version most travellers meet, and it is a genuinely different experience from the feast.
The other Tinos
Tinos carries two reputations at once: the country’s biggest Orthodox pilgrimage, and a slow craft island of marble-carved villages, stone dovecotes and granite boulder country.
Which of the two islands you meet turns on one date, 15 August. The boulder country around Volax is the other half, and things to do in Tinos covers the marble villages.
Practical notes
Getting there: Tinos has no airport, so every arrival is by sea, and the ferry leaves from Rafina, not Piraeus - about an hour and a half by high-speed catamaran or roughly three and a half hours by conventional, daily year-round. The Mykonos hop is a quarter of an hour to half an hour.
When: May to June and September. July and August are hot, windy and busy.
We print no opening hours. Check before you go.
Common questions
Is it free to enter? Outside the peaks the church is open to visitors and free to enter, with modest dress expected.
Do I need to be Orthodox to visit? The church is open to visitors. What is asked is modest dress and respect for what is happening around you.
Should I come for 15 August? Only deliberately. It is the busiest day on the island and the accommodation and ferries move accordingly.
Next
Our Tinos guide has the practicalities, things to do in Tinos covers the craft island, and Greek Easter and August covers what the feast weeks do to travel.