Mount Athos
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How it came to be
Mount Athos rises on the narrow eastern prong of the Chalcidice peninsula in northern Greece, reaching into the Aegean. Monks were living there by the 4th century at the latest, and in the 7th century monks fleeing Egypt after the Islamic conquest joined them.
In 963 the monk Athanasius founded the Great Lavra with the backing of Byzantine emperor Nikephoros II Phokas, marking the shift from scattered hermitages to large communal monasteries. In 972 Emperor John I Tzimiskes signed the community's first charter. After Constantinople fell in 1453, Athos kept its self-government under Ottoman rule.
Today about 1,400 monks live in 20 large monasteries, and women are barred from entering. The Protaton church keeps wall paintings by Manuel Panselinos from around 1290. UNESCO listed Athos as a mixed site in 1988.
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