Church of Panagia Barotsiani in Argyroupoli
In the Barotsiana district of village Argyroupolis there is the church of Our Lady (Panagia) Barotsiani, a single-storey 13th-century church, to which a chapel of Saint Anthony was added later. The name comes from the Venetian family Barozzi, who owned the area of Argiroupolis. This family is believed to originate from Andreas Barozzi, who betrayed Candia (today's Heraklion city), during the long siege by the Turks in 1669.
Internally, interesting is the post-Gothic decoration of two pairs of columns, one of which is crowned with a bow, pierced with trilobite holes not found in another temple in Crete. The church was decorated with frescoes, which make it difficult to distinguish. We can discern the Ascension, the Nativity and the Resurrection. There were also probably arcosolia (funerary monuments of the Venetian era) that were removed during the various phases of temple expansion.
