Agia Paraskevi

The church of St. Varvara is located in the southern part of the small plain of Syrmeso , near a small village under the same name1km south of Dories village, 21km north of Agios Nikolaos and 19km from Elounda, Lassithi prefecture and close to Aretiou Monastery and Agios Konstantinos Monastery.

It is a single-nave barrel-vaulted church with a southern entrance crowned with a plain semicircular relieving arch, in the tympanum of which Saint Varvara is depicted. In the years of the Venetian rule, it was a Catholicon of a monastery, habitats of which are preserved on its edges. The best-preserved one is the long two-storey building on the west, with a vaulted ground floor kept in good condition, and its first floor half-abandoned today.

The establishment of the monastery by the monk Nicodemos Kalochrysos, founder of the neighboring monastery of St. Antonios, is dated before 1591. Written reference to St. Varvara is also made in contracts, which were drawn up by its monks, Akakios Alyfantis in 1608, and Malachias Kalochrysos, brother of Nicodemos in the years 1611 and 1615. In 1635 the monastery of St. Varvara in Fourni was registered by the monk Ieremias Amargianitis as a church, owned by the monk Malachias Kalochrysos.