St. Nicholas Church -Akritas

In 1870 the local council and the villagers decided to build a new church.
The project was undertaken by the master builder Bran from Struga. He designed the church with a capacity of 1500 – 2000 people and estimated the cost at 3000 Turkish lira and the construction time in 3 years. It was built in the same place where there was an older small church dating from 1803, with the materials of the old church.
It is a three-aisled wooden-roofed basilica with a loggia on three sides (N, S and W). Interesting from an architectural point of view is the external configuration of the apse of the sanctuary that creates three blind arches in the drums of which an equal number of windows are opened and above a frieze with 11 blind decorative niches and a cornice with successive rows of serrated bands. On the lintel of the outer A window of the diakoniko there is the date <<18 + 72>>.
Inside the church are preserved remarkable wood carvings such as the shrines, the despotic throne and the iconostasis with the interesting Beautiful Gate. At the doors of the prosthesis there is an inscription “work of painter Drosopigi”, while in the quadrant there is an icon of Panagia Vlachernitissa, as well as the scyphoid icon of Agios Nikolaos dating back to before 1803.

SOURCE: C. H. Voskopoulou (Bufi – Akritas) – “Prespes” 2001
Archive of the Municipality of Florina. Moutsopoulos “The Churches of Florina”