Church of Iasonas and Sosipatros

At the area of Anemomylos is the most important monument of the Middle Byzantine period in Corfu, the church that is dedicated to Saints Iasonas and Sosipatros, disciples of Apostle Paul, who first preached Christianity to the people of the island in the 1st century AD.

The church was erected in around 1000 by craftsmen of Attica of Boeotia and replaced the older catholicon of a monastery, which was initially dedicated to Agios Andreas.
It is a cross-in-square church with a dome, supported on walls and two columns, and as a matter of fact is one of the oldest and best preserved examples of this architectural type. Its walls on their lower part are built with large pieces of limestone, which probably came from the ruins of ancient Palaiopolis, which was located at the nearby peninsula of Kanoni. At the upper part they followed the cloisonné system of masonry decorated with characteristic ceramic patterns.

The interior of the church must have been filled with wall paintings, at least until 1820, when its walls were whitewashed and many of the wall paintings were destroyed. Nowadays a few parts survive, which date from various periods from the 11th to the 16th century. The oldest surviving figure is the one of Agios Arsenios, archbishop of Corfu, at the narthex, while from the later wall paintings remarkable are the figures of the hierarchs at the altar and the scene of the baptism at the narthex, from which two angels survive. Of exceptional art are the baroque marble screen, as well as its despotic icons, works of the most important painter of the period and representative of the Cretan School, Emmanuel Tzane. The icons were added in 1650 and the most important work of the painter in Corfu.

At the church there are the tombs of Saints Iasonas and Sosipatros, and they celebrate their memory on the 29th of April.