The painting hung on the back wall of Panagitsa Church on the Greek island of Aegina.
Tarpon Springs, Florida, Mayor John Koulianos walked in and found an icon his city’s Greek Orthodox cathedral had been missing for over a century.
The artwork depicts St. Nicholas. Artists painted it during the days of the Byzantine Empire.
Its American chapter began in 1910. Immigrants from Aegina donated the icon to St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs.
Thirteen years later, a fire struck the church. Afterward, the painting traveled back to Aegina to be restored.
The icon never returned to Florida. It did not cross the Atlantic again.
Koulianos revisited the story during a July vacation in Europe, WTVT reported. He set aside time for a special trip to Aegina.
He explained his purpose in a Facebook post, which The Christian Post cited.
“On our vacation to Europe in July, I made a special trip to Aegina to arrange for the completion of the twinning ceremony as well as attempting to locate the icon for its return to Tarpon Springs,” Koulianos wrote.
He then summed up the results of the trip. “I believe I may have been successful in achieving both goals.”
The breakthrough came during his meeting with the mayor of Aegina. The island’s mayor picked up the phone and called a local priest. That priest remembered where someone had left the icon.
Church staff and officials located it on the back wall of Panagitsa Church.
Koulianos described the painting’s size to WTVT. He said it is “about the size of maybe like a movie poster, it’s about this big, a little bit too big to put in a suitcase.”
The mayor also told the station he weighed the idea of carrying it out himself. “I was thinking about that, and maybe I could just grab it, and that wasn’t going to happen,” he added.
The painting’s next move remains unsettled. The Christian Post reported that it is unclear whether Greek Orthodox Church officials will authorize its return to Tarpon Springs.
Koulianos has stated his own goal plainly. He wants the St. Nicholas icon back in Florida, and he said so in his Facebook post.
“We are also working on completing a reunion over 100 years in the making. Bringing a special icon of St. Nicholas back to our St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Tarpon Springs,” Koulianos continued.
He also named the church leaders who support the effort.
“With the blessing of our Metropolitan Sebastian, along with the assistance of our parish priest, Father Aristides, we are hopeful to make this a reality.”
The icon is one of two projects tying the cities together. Koulianos is working with his Greek counterpart, the mayor of Aegina, to establish a sister city relationship between Tarpon Springs and Aegina.
That partnership connects to the twinning ceremony he mentioned online. He traveled to the island in July to arrange for its completion.
The painting’s timeline now stretches across more than a century.
Aegina immigrants gave it to the Tarpon Springs cathedral in 1910, it returned to the island after the 1923 fire, and Koulianos located it on a church wall during his July visit.
