The earliest written record of the Panagia Chrysopigi appears in a manuscript by the monk Parthenios Hairetis, dated by scholars to 1676 or 1677. The manuscript describes the miracles attributed to the site — and the most arresting of them is the splitting of the rock. According to tradition, the promontory itself was divided from the island by divine intervention, creating the narrow gap now bridged over. Whether the gap is the cause of the legend or the legend grew from the gap is one of those questions that places like this resist answering. The monastery complex on the islet includes the church, a refectory, cells, and two additional vaulted rooms of uncertain purpose — possibly altars for Catholic worshippers, given Venetian influence in the Cyclades.

The single-aisled church carries a wall inscription dating its current form to 1757, when it was probably rebuilt. Vaulted and solid, the interior is reinforced by half-metre-wide stone slings supported on piers. The floor is marble, and carved into it in front of the iconostasis is a double-headed eagle — a Byzantine symbol — that dates from the period 1801 to 1816. The entrance is framed in marble decorated with waves, rosettes, and a carved motif probably reflecting Venetian influence: the Cyclades passed through Venetian control for centuries before the Ottoman period, and its architecture carries both memories. Above the entrance, the bilobed spire rises on two pilasters, and two plaques are built into the facade — one marked 1757, the other carrying an inscription in Russian.

The name Chrysopigi — Golden Spring, or sometimes translated as Golden Source — may refer to a freshwater spring on or near the promontory, though the precise etymology has not been definitively established. What is beyond dispute is the visual effect of the monastery complex in Aegean light. White walls, blue dome, the sea on three sides, the long bridge connecting island to islet: it is one of the most photographed spots in the Cyclades, and with reason. Near the Panagia Chrysopigi lies the small fishing settlement of Faros — probably the island's main port in earlier centuries — and the beaches nearby at Apokofto bay have developed a reputation for good, traditional tavernas.

The formal appointment of the Panagia Chrysopigi as patron saint of Sifnos in 1964 was the official recognition of a devotion that had been building for three centuries. On the Feast of the Holy Spirit — the Monday after Pentecost — the icon is carried in procession from the monastery, and the celebration draws people from across the island and from the Greek diaspora. The older monastic function has faded; the complex no longer operates as an active monastery. But the church itself remains a living place of worship, the most visited religious site on Sifnos, and the image its buildings make against the Aegean sky has become inseparable from how Sifnos sees itself.