The Holy Metropolitan Church of the Presentation of the Virgin Mary is a Greek Orthodox cathedral in Chania’s old town, Athinagora Square. It was constructed between 1850 and 1860, during the latter years of Ottoman sovereignty.
The center aisle of the church is devoted to the Presentation of the Virgin, while the south aisle is dedicated to the Three Hierarchs and the north aisle is dedicated to Saint Nicholas.
Icons by well-known 19th-century Cretan icon painters such as Antonios Revelakis, Antonios Vivilakis, E. Triolitakis, and Ioannis Stais may be seen throughout the church. Local goldsmiths created silver coverings for several of the iconostasis. The painter Kokotsis created frescoes of SS Peter and Paul over the iconostasis of the central nave.
The painting “She Who is Wider Than the Heavens,” created by Nikos Giannakakis in the dome above the sanctuary, depicts the Virgin Mary.
“Ye who walk here behold the church of the Mother of God, constructed by devoted children of the Church taking refuge like scared birds in the middle of a storm beneath the wing of the heavenly protective veil,” says an epigram carved in Greek on the pediment of the front wall.
