What's in a name?

Roadsigns on the Paleochora/Azogires Road; within 20 metres of each other!


Azogires or Azogyres?

It’s said that the name Azogires means in the old Cretan dialect, and means 'the circle of life', indicating a good place to live.



It's also said that Azogyres (note the Y) means, in the same dialect, an unpleasant smelly bush*.

The village we are concerned with is known as Azogires, in spite of the road signs, and is not to be confused with the other Azogyres, over the mountains towards Voutas.


* The source of this piece of information live in Azogires and is thought to be somewhat biased!

Tales of Papa Papagregorakis #3

The Evergreen Plane Tree

(The tree is located on the pathway down to the Monastery, just before the 'modern,' but now deserted, olive oil factory. See the map in the Alpha Kafenion.)

Papa Gavriel and the Plane Tree

Some people believed that the Evergreen Plane Tree had some sort of power for Papa Gavriel. The tree originally had 99 crosses formed by its branches, one for each of the Holy Fathers who followed St. John to Azogires, but nowadays there are a lot less.

Once Papa Gavriel was trying to build a bridge down stream from the current one to save the people having to walk up the valley to cross the river. But there was another plane tree in the way. He was cutting off a branch from this tree when another branch fell on his back, injuring him. They took him to the monastery.

The next day the villagers came to see him and offered to use his sharp axe to cut down the offending plane tree.

“What tree?” was Papa Gavriel’s reply.

They went down to the river and there was the offending plane tree: dry, rotting and falling apart.

When they made the road to the monastery the man with the bulldozer tried to remove the Evergreen Plane Tree. The villagers told him not to but he carried on, ignored them and cut into the roots of the tree. As he did, the bulldozer cut out. He started it again but when he cut into the roots it shut down again. The third time he hit the tree, the bulldozer cut out, rolled 5 metres backwards and rolled down the hill. It took another bulldozer to pull it out

In the 1990s there was a merchant who wanted to show that there was nothing special about the Evergreen Plane Tree. He and a friend took a branch of the tree and took it off in their car. Just outside the village the car broke down; it appeared to have run out of petrol.

They came back to the village for help thinking that someone had siphoned the petrol out of their car. When the helpers arrived with petrol can they found the petrol gauge reading full and petrol in the tank. They checked the electrics and the battery; all appeared to be all right but the car still would not start. Then one of the men said,

”Maybe there’s something about the tree after all”

and threw the branch out of the car. They turned the ignition key and the car started immediately.

Tales of Papa Papagregorakis #2

Papa Gavriel's vestments in the Azogires Museum

(For access to the Museum, enquire at the Alpha Kafenion)

Papa Gavriel and the Chandelier

Papa Gavriel went to a mosque or somewhere and got a crystal chandelier for the church but it was in a thousand pieces and had to be put together. He went to the kafenion and told a couple of men to come and help him put it together. They were playing cards and so they said, “Ok Priest, go ahead and we will come.”

Half an hour later the shouted to them “Are you coming or not?” and they said, “Yes.”

20 minutes later he walked into the kafenion with a stick and so they dropped their cards and all three went up to the church.

Papa Gavriel had put the chandelier pieces into lines and they were numbered so that they can be put together and put up.

Suddenly the priest started shouting at the men “Get out, get out now!”

“But we’ve come to fix the chandelier “ they said but he pushed them out of the church and closed the door.

Suddenly they start to hear noises from inside. Two minutes later Pater Gavriel opens the church door and there’s the chandelier hanging complete from the roof. Such was the inner power of Papa Gavriel –or George as his real name was.


Papa Gavriel and the Metropolitan

Once there used to be nuns in the monastery.

One time the Metropolitan, the head priest, from Selino/Kissamos came to see Papa Gavriel. The visit don’t go well and the Metropolitan was upset and angry because there was no reception committee for him, no bells were rung in his honour and nobody clapped when he came to the monastery. While they were sitting down to dinner with the other monks and nuns, the Metropolitan accused Papa Gavriel of having sex with the nuns – others who were jealous of Papa Gavriel had said this.

Papa Gavriel picked up his cassock, his long robe, and pointed to the injury he had received from the Turks saying ‘How can I have sex with anybody?”

Then he picked up the Metropolitan, put him on the monastery table and started to beat him –some say he also threatened to shoot him with his revolver!

That’s the reason Papa Gavriel left his land and property to the village of Azogires and not to the church, because he realized that these church people were not the proper people to have his land. Everything in the village used to be maintained with his money; the INKA Supermarket by Skala in Paleochora belongs to Azogires and his money paid for the road to be made from Paleochora to Azogires.

Papa Gavriel and the Wall

One day a man was walking to Anidri for a wedding dressed in his best clothes and he came across Papa Gavriel trying to move a stone the size of a table with a wooden beam; he wanted to build a wall. He had been working all his life so this was not unusual.

“Come and help me,” said the priest.

“I can’t” said the man, “I’ve got my best clothes on.”

“OK” said Papa Gavriel.

The man went 20 or 30 metres then feeling ashamed of himself, took his jacket off and went back to help the priest.

The two of them tried to move the stone but it was too big for them and all they could do was tilt it a little. Eventually Papa Gavriel said to the man “OK, go on to your wedding,” which the man did.

About 6 am the following day the man was walking back from Anidri and he looked for the stone but it wasn’t there, it was off the path and built into a wall which was packed with dirt - the work of 10 men for a couple of days.

He got to the bridge and saw the priest sitting there eating some cheese.

“How did you manage that?” he asked.

Papa Gavriel replied, “My friends helped me.”

“Who are your friends?” said the man................and the priest just smiled.

Nobody knows how it happened.

Tales of Papa Gavriel Papagregorakis #1

Gavriel Papagregorakis
(Photograph in Azogires Monastery Museum. For access to the Museum, enquire at the Alpha Kafenion.)


The monastery at Azogires was a monastery before the Holy Fathers came; it’s shown in old icons but no one knows how old it is.

There is another cave there somewhere with the treasures of the monastery; that’s where the Holy Fathers first came. In the cave is said to be the soul of Gavriel Papagregorakis, the watchman of the monastery, the priest who is said to be still guarding the monastery and Azogires.



He has many stories told about him; he was a very powerful man but no one knows where his power came from.

He was a short stocky man with a big bushy beard and he lived from 1838 to 1929.

He was a priest who had been involved in one of the wars against the Turks and was shot in the wrong place and therefore he couldn’t have children.

He eventually became the head of the monastery, which at that time had both monks and nuns.

He had nothing; he was a workingman all his life, working day and night, living on olives and bread. In the end he bought one third of Azogires and when he died he left it all to what is called the Church Committee formed of 5 people.

The Goat

He had a flourmill here; a second mill below (the monastery?); another by the bridge; an olive oil factory and a kafenion. They all worked from the same small water source; he was the Leonardo De Vinci of Azogires.

He was also a merchant and he had another kafenion by Agios Georgos. He was once sitting in this kafenion looking at some pine trees he had planted that stretched from there up to the monastery when a goat came along and started eating his pine trees. He started shouting at the goat and he said “Damn you goat!’ and the goat started rolling down the hill.

The villagers went to eat the goat but Papa Gavriel said, “Don’t bother, it’s cursed.”

They sliced open the goat and smoke started coming out of it.

The Cave of John the Hermit

The cave of St John the Hermit

It’s said that when St John the Hermit arrived in Azogires, around 1300CE, he stayed in a cave up by the Alpha Hotel known as St John’s Cave or the Holy Cave. The cave is believed to have been used for human habitation for several thousand years.

It is still used as a place of worship and during the Second World War, it was used as a hiding place for weapons for the partisans.

The Holy Father's Burial

Shrine of the Holy Father's in the Holy Father's Cave

The Holy Father's burial

The Holy fathers went to the village of Sambronas and cured the sick people there. In return the villagers promised that they would bury the Fathers when they died. But when that happened, the villagers didn’t come and from that time until recently, the village of Sambronas didn’t have its own graveyard. The ground wouldn’t accept them and they had to be buried outside of their village because they hadn’t buried the 98 Holy Fathers.

The death of Saint John and the cave of the Holy Fathers.

When St John the Hermit left Azogires he went to Gouvernetou on the north of the island stopping at different places on the way and many churches were built in his honour. He was now an old man preaching that god doesn’t need money, just love and respect and if you want to do something good for God you should do something good for mankind – not a lot of people liked what he preached.

According to legend he was wearing a sheepskin jacket one night when he crawled into a garden to get some vegetables to eat. A hunter saw him and thought he was a sheep in his garden and shot him with his bow and arrow. He followed the trail of blood into a cave, where they celebrate St John on October 8 each year, when he saw a large bright light in the cave. He realised what he had done and he went in and asked for the holy man’s forgiveness.

The holy man said,“ I forgive you but you must go to Azogires and find my holy brothers; tell them I am dying and it’s their time to die also. But go now because when the light goes out you might hurt yourself leaving this cave.”

The hunter got out and went to Azogires on his horse; it took him a day and a half. But, according to tradition, by the time he got to Azogires, the Holy Fathers were all dead. They are supposed to be still in their cave, sat in a circle with their sticks and their possessions.

The cave itself is about a 45 minute walk from the Alpha Kafenion, up in the hills towards Spaniakos (ask Lucky for directions). The rear part of the cave was closed in the 1920’s by the priest and by an earthquake but, if you are careful, you can still climb down the iron ladder into the front portion. The cave is supposed to come out in Kadros, on the other side of the mountain from its entrance, 1 1/2 kilometres underground; the water in the cave is said to be able to cure illness and it's believed by some that there are 99 pigeons living there.

A properly surveyed map of the cave is hanging on the wall in the Alpha Kafenion.

(According to one person, the Holy Fathers brought with them from Egypt either the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant and that’s where they got their powers. Nobody knows what it is, but it’s supposed to be something powerful from the Jewish nation and it’s supposed to account for many of the strange and bizarre things that have happened in the village.)

DRAGON'S CAVE

Acording to local legend, in the cave you see above there once lived a dragon who loved human meat. It's said that his favourite meal was unsuspecting children crossing the path below. Up to this day we don't know what this creature was or when it lived but one thing we do know is that the locals are still scared of the area today.

So, when you visit Azogires, it's worth a trip to Dragon's cave; the view is astonishing.