Helena Handbasket

By Tivoli

Αγιος Ιωάννης στο Καστρί

This is the church of St John the Baptist-on-the-rock. It is not, nor has it ever been the church of red chiffon, the church of Meryl Streep, the church of Abba nor the church of The Winner Takes it All. It is far older than any of those and it will outlast all of them. Tourists flock to it nowadays and write in the visitors book about how disappointed they are to find that it is tiny and could not possibly hold a congregation of the size present in the movie. That is because the wedding in the movie was shot in a studio set in Pinewood, UK. The exterior of the church seen in the movie is not this real one either but a plywood facade built over the original to avoid 'Tardis' effect. The church in the movie faces the other way and the sun sets in the East. 

The doors of the monastic cells were carved in 1945 by one Chas A Dennery from Georgia in the US, presumably to prove he had a bigger pen-knife than any of the other servicemen who chose to inflict injury on a place of religious contemplation.

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