The church of Panagia Keriotissa is the ornament of the village of Keri in Zakynthos. The first archival testimonies mention the existence of a church of the Virgin Mary from the 17th century. In 1630, it was granted by a ducal decree from the Venetian State to the inhabitants of the village of Keri. Following the famous architectural style of the single-aisled basilica on the island of Zakynthos, it was renovated according to an inscription in 1745, maintaining to this day -and following its restoration after the catastrophic earthquakes of 1953- its old form. Over the centuries the church was decorated with remarkable works of wood carving, silversmithing, icons and religious paintings. The love of the inhabitants of Keri for their temples and tradition, lead to a continuous enrichment of the church with brilliant works of art, something that nowadays makes Panagia Keriotissa not only a sacred place but also an important cultural monument of Zakynthos. The protector, classed as ‘despotic’ and painted in two sides icon of Panagia that keeps Jesus with her right hand on the front side and of Agios Nikolaos on the back is a pole of attraction for many pilgrims, especially on the 15th of August where a festival with a Litany is held in the village as well as on Easter Monday, with a Hierarchical Divine Liturgy and Litany of the Icon of the Virgin Mary. A representation of this procession of the year 1879 with the people of that time in their local costumes, is found in oil painting on the parapet of the woman, a work by the Zakynthian painter Spyridon Pelekasis. According to local tradition in 1606, a villager saw every day in the same place some glow among the bushes while feeding his sheep. He decided to see what exactly was there and set it on fire to reveal it, and then the icon was found. The back image was partially burned. He took it proudly to the village. The next day, however, it was missing from the place where it had been kept. The shepherd, going to feed his animals, found the icon again in the exact same place he had seen it the first time. The villagers decided to build a church in this place to preserve the icon. From the 17th c., the miraculous icon was covered with silver lining except for the faces of the Holy Infant and the Virgin Mary and was placed in a wooden gilded frame on the iconostasis. The baroque gilded iconostasis was created in 1750 by Ioannis Gropas and Nikolaos Logothetis and was decorated with icons of Priest Stylianos Stavrakis, Apostolos Krezias and Petros Priest Bossos, dating to the second half of the 18th century. The church also preserves several important silver sculptures dating to the 17th, 18th and 19th century, works of locals such as Bafas and others brought from abroad. One of the very few surviving large basins of sanctification (koknes) in Zakynthos is really of great interest.