The Annunciation at Panagia Evangelistria, Tinos

On 25 March the Church of Panagia Evangelistria keeps the Annunciation of the Theotokos — the titular feast of the icon it was raised to house, and the day Greece marks the outbreak of its War of Independence. The two observances are not coincidental: the image of the Annunciation was uncovered here on 30 January 1823, in the second year of the revolution, after the nun Pelagia of the Monastery of Kechrovouni reported visions of the Virgin directing the dig. The finding, in the first days of the Greek state, made the Megalochari of Tinos the nation’s patron, and the marble church that rose above the site — its cornerstone laid in 1823, the basilica complete by 1830 — the first notable monument of the liberated nation.

The day holds a fixed order kept since the nineteenth century: vespers and an all-night vigil, a hierarchal liturgy, then the procession of the silver-cased icon down the lanes it first travelled in 1823, from the church on the rise to the quay below. Pilgrims climb the same approach, many on their knees by long custom. The Panhellenic Holy Foundation of Evangelistria, the public-law charity that has administered the shrine since 1825, orders the feast, which the Hellenic Navy attends in the year’s other great Tinos gathering — the spring counterpart to the Dormition the island keeps each August.