Ermoupoli, the capital of Syros, is unlike anywhere else in the Cyclades: a nineteenth-century port city of marble pavements, a neoclassical town hall and an opera house, built by refugees and merchants who made the island a commercial hub of the new Greek state. The Church of the Dormition of the Virgin belongs to that city - grand, urban, richly furnished, an Orthodox cathedral in a town that also has a Catholic hill above it, Syros being one of the rare Greek islands with two substantial Christian communities living side by side. Its principal treasure is an icon of the Dormition attributed to Domenikos Theotokopoulos, the Cretan painter later known in Spain as El Greco, dating from his years before he left for Venice. The film examines the icon and the painted interior, follows the liturgy, and situates the church within the marble streets, the harbour and the double religious identity that gives Syros its particular character.
