Church of Saint George at Ano Symi
The church of Saint George (Agios Georgios) is located in the ruined settlement Ano Symi, province Ierapetra, near Kato Symi, province Viannos, and celebrates on November 3. It consists of the original single-room church, to which a late transverse aisle was added later. According to a founding inscription, the murals were donored by someone named "Georgios", while the transverse aisle was frescoed under the sponsorship of "Konstantinos Froulas and his son Thomas".
The original church has frescoes by the hagiographer Manuel Fokas and dates back to the middle of the 15th century, as it bears similar elements to Saint George in Embaros and Saint Constantine in Avdou. The transverse aisle bears frescoes of 1453, again by Manuel Fokas, which are considered the last of this great artist of the Palaeologean (Contantinople) art.
The iconographic program in the original aisle includes representations from the evangelical cycle with an emphasis on the Miracles of Jesus, three of which are depicted in the arch, and the scene of Saint George before the Lord. In the vertical aisle they are very fragmentarily preserved, while they were completed in the second phase with scenes of the Dodecaorton (12 most important feasts of the Greek Orthodox Church) and the life of Saint George.
