The Sacred Oak of Theoskepasti

The chapel next door is named after what this tree is said to have done. Panagia Theoskepasti means God-covered, and the account told in Kalopanagiotis is that the oak's branches spread far enough over the small 12th century chapel to hide it from raiders passing through the Marathasa valley. Tradition rather than record, but it has carried the name for a long time. The tree is a prinos, the Cypriot word for kermes oak, though one account of the site calls it a holm oak instead, a related but different species, and nobody has settled which it is. If you can tell the two apart on sight, tell us. Local tradition puts the oak at roughly 700 years. Every source repeats that figure and none of them measured it, so read it as a claim rather than a count. What is on record is that the Cyprus Department of Forests holds the tree under protection. It stands in the open yard beside the chapel, a few steps from the Agios Ioannis Lampadistis Monastery, which UNESCO listed in 1985 among the Painted Churches of the Troodos Region. Kalopanagiotis sits on the northern flank of Troodos, about an hour of mountain road from Nicosia, and the oak asks nothing of a visitor: no gate, no ticket, daylight hours.