Tinos Town

Civilization on Tinos is a millennium older than Tinos Town, or Chora, founded in the 5th century BC. On weekends and during festivals, Chora is thronged with Greeks attending church, and restaurants and hotels cater to them. As the well-known story goes, in 1822, just as the War of Independence was getting underway, and Tinos the first of the islands to sign up, the Virgin sent the nun Pelagia a dream about a buried icon of the Annunciation. On January 30, 1823, such an icon was unearthed amid the foundations of a Byzantine church, and it started to heal people immediately. A timely intervention, perhaps, that served to secure the links between the Orthodox Church and Greek nationalism. Today, there are two major pilgrimage days—March 25th (Annunciation) and August 15th (Assumption)—when the icon is carried around the island.