The Brief
- Tarpon Springs Mayor John Koulianos located a century-old missing religious icon in Aegina, Greece, after visiting the city’s mayor.
- Fire damaged the St. Nicholas icon in 1923, leading to its return overseas for repairs before it went missing for 103 years.
- Greek Orthodox leaders in both countries must approve returning the historic artwork to Tarpon Springs ahead of a planned sister city ceremony.
TARPON SPRINGS, Fla. – A lost century-old religious painting from Tarpon Springs is one step closer to returning home after being discovered in a small town in Greece.
St. Nicholas icon found
What we know:
Tarpon Springs Mayor John Koulianos tracked down the missing St. Nicholas icon while on vacation in Greece. People from Aegina, Greece, originally presented the artwork to the local cathedral in 1910. Damage from a 1923 fire sent the painting back to its original artist in Aegina for restoration, but it never returned to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral.
Koulianos met with the mayor of Aegina, and the Greek mayor made a phone call to a local priest who remembered where it was. They found the Byzantine artwork hanging on the back wall of Panagitsa Church.
“It’s about the size of maybe like a movie poster, it’s about this big, a little bit too big to put in a suitcase,” said Koulianos. “I was thinking about that, and maybe I could just grab it and that wasn’t going to happen.”…