Monasteries of Daphni, Hosios Loukas and Nea Moni of Chios

Hosios Loukas was founded in the 10th century on the slopes of Mount Helicon by the hermit Luke of Steiris. He died on 7 February 953, and his relics were said to exude a healing oil, drawing pilgrims. The wealth they brought paid for the katholikon, tentatively dated to 1011 to 1012, the earliest surviving domed-octagon church.

Nea Moni on Chios began, according to tradition, when three monks told Constantine Monomachos, then in exile on Lesbos, that he would become emperor. On becoming emperor in 1042, Constantine IX began the monastery, and the monastery and its main church were completed in 1049. Daphni, northwest of Athens, was founded at the end of the sixth century on the site of a sanctuary of Apollo, and gained a new octagonal church in the prosperous 11th and 12th centuries. All three churches have a dome on squinches over an octagonal space and gold-ground mosaics.

In 1205 Daphni was sacked by crusaders and passed to the Cistercians under Othon de la Roche, ruler of the Duchy of Athens. In April 1822, during the Greek War of Independence, Ottoman troops stormed Nea Moni and killed many of the 2,000 people who had taken refuge there. An earthquake in 1881 brought down the dome of its main church, and Daphni was damaged in the earthquake of 1999 before being restored. The three monasteries were inscribed together as a World Heritage site in 1990.