How to use our church tool to find the perfect location for your wedding / christening or visit.
Ekklisiacy.com has several features, however, the best feature, is undoubtedly our church tool, that helps you find in no time, any church in Cyprus, whether it is for your wedding, christening or to plan your next visit.
Navigate to our tool either be typing https://www.ekklisiacy.com/churches on your browser’s URL or visiting the ekklisiacy.com home page, and either clicking the start button or by clicking the Churches button on our site navigation bar.
As a disclaimer, creating this site, had its unique challenges, one of which was finding how many churches Cyprus has, as searching on the web in multiple search engines and websites, stated only about 300 – 500 churches. This led us to the huge task of manually visiting all locations (villages) in Cyprus, in Google maps, and discovering each church.
A big number of these churches had almost no available information online, especially for information such as capacity and architecture. This is why some information has been calculated or estimated by the use of Artificial intelligence.
For example, the capacity was calculated, the using the scale feature in Google maps, to extract the internal and external space in square meters, assuming chairs for the interior and exterior, calculating wall width and assigning, 0.65 square meters for sitting persons and finally dividing the church space via the space occupied by people.
Architecture was a mixture of AI and manual person reviewed process, with the AI doing the initial assessment and a person reviewing the results manually from Google Maps photos.
Each church also includes a verified information section, where all the information regarding that church have been reviewed and cross referenced by a human.
All church photos for ekklisiacy.com are property of the website and are taken by the people behind the page. This is a painstakingly long process that will take time to complete but is needed in order to maintain the quality of the content delivered on our site.
Once at the church tool page, there are multiple filters to choose from in order to find what you want. The Name box includes all the churches that we have found here in Cyprus and are listed by name. You can also search inside the name box by typing anything, if it exists, it will try to auto complete it.
The visitor can also filter by City, and village, while the village is also search friendly, auto completing what you type. The weddings / christenings box is used to display whether a church allows weddings or christenings so that the user doesn’t need to do guesswork to find which church they can use.
As stated earlier, capacity has been guessed by using AI calculations, but as we believe it is imperative to be able to choose the right church for your needs, we made the decision to include it.
The location box describes in one word, where the church is located. Plain means the church is surrounded by open fields, Sea means it is within viewing distance of the sea, Mountain means that is it surrounded by mountains, Village means that you can view the village houses, no matter if it is on flat surface or mountains, and finally city means it is within the city limits.
The architecture box describes the various types of church architectures. This is a bit of a mixed bag as many churches do not strictly appeal to the specifics of one architecture and may use one or more architectures combined. The ancient architecture means that the church is really old and mostly does not adhere to any style. Basilica means that the church is a huge, majestic church. Byzantine mostly adheres to the byzantine style. Gothic have pointed arches, rib vaults, flying buttresses and have stained glass and traceried windows. Contemporary architecture replaces the heavy, traditional styles with natural materials and minimalist lines. Modern do not adhere to any style but are built using modern techniques and materials. Post Byzantine is a fusion of materials and styles that blend into the environment. Stone built just indicates that the church was built or covered by stones. And finally traditional architecture indicates the construction methods, local materials and adaptions to the environment rather than a standardized style.
The tool also includes Cyprus churches from multiple religions. These are:
· Christian Orthodox
· Christian Orthodox (Old Calendar)
· Anglican
· Armenian
· Eastern Orthodox
· Evangelical
· Jehovah Witnesses
· Maronite
· Mormon
· Roman Catholic
Holy water option lists all the churches that have holy water in their location or close by, as it is essential for church goers when planning their next trip.
Finally, we are left with the status option, which indicates whether the church is in the free or occupied areas of Cyprus.
When using the tool, you can make as many selections as you prefer and click the Search button to display the list of churches that match those criteria.
The number of churches matching the criteria is also shown bellow the tool, before the church cards.
You can set all options back to default by clicking the clear filter button at the top of the tool.
To view a church from the results, click the church photo, and the full church page will open. The name of the church is then displayed at the top, along with a short description of the church’s history, location and architecture. A gallery of photos in displayed in the middle (if available) with the church’s specifics below.
A google maps link button can take you directly to the church’s Google Maps page, where you can find additional photos, information, as well as use the link as navigation.
Finally, a map is displayed at the bottom, showing where the church is on the map, directly within ekklisiacy.com.