Contact: The Holy Executive of the Holy
Mount Athos Pilgrims'
Bureau
109 EGNATIA STR.
546 22, Thessaloniki, Greece
Tel.
+30 2310 252578
Fax +30 2310 222424
Mount Athos also known as Holy Mountain is located on the Eastern “leg” of the Chalcidice peninsula in the Northern Greece and harbors 20 Eastern orthodox monasteries. Without a doubt this is the most important pilgrimage site for Eastern Christians in Greece as well as abroad. Mount Athos peninsula is connected to mainland, but only way to get there is by boat.
Before you will visit the site you will have to learn some of the rules that apply here. Women and boys under 18 are not allowed to step on the soil of the mountain. Besides you will have to get a permit (diamonitirion) from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Directorate of Churches; No 2, Zalokosta Street, Athens, tel: 3626-894) or from Ministry of Northern Greece (Directorate of Civil Affairs; Diikitiriou Square, Thessalonica, tel. 031/270-092). Another way to get the permit is by contacting offices of Mount Athos at Ouranoupolis. It costs 18 Euros for the Orthodox visitors and 35 Euros for the non- Orthodox. Besides you will need a passport. Then contact the Pilgrims’ Bureau (contact info below) to give them a notice of your arrival. It might be up to six months in advance if you choose to travel in summer, which is why it is probably the worst time to travel there. Besides notifying each monastery where you choose to stay is a must. You can do that by contacting each by phone or fax. You can get both from this site: abacus.bates.edu/~rallison/friends/friendsguide.html
Mount Athos has twenty monasteries:
Great Lavra
(Μεγίστη Λαύρα Megísti Lávra) Vatopédi (Βατοπέδι) Iviron (Ιβήρων)
Chilandariou (Χιλανδαρίου, or Хиландар Hilandar in Serbian)
Dionysiou (Διονυσίου) Koutloumousiou (Κουτλουμούσι) Pantokratoros
(Παντοκράτορος) Xiropotamou (Ξηροποτάμου) Zograf (Ζωγράφου, Зограф
Zograf in Bulgarian) Dochiariou (Δοχειάρι) Karakalou (Καρακάλλου)
Filotheou (Φιλοθέου) Simonos Petra (Σίμωνος Πέτρα or Σιμωνόπετρα)
Agiou Pavlou (Αγίου Παύλου) Stavronikita (Σταυρονικήτα) Zenofondts
(Ξενοφώντος) Osiou Grigoriou (Οσίου Γρηγορίου) Esphigmenou
(Εσφιγμένου) Agiou Panteleimonos (Αγίου Παντελεήμονος, or Ρωσικό
Rossikon) Konstamonitou (Κωνσταμονίτου)
Mount Athos is located on the eponymous eastern finger of the
Chalkidikí peninsula in the Central Macedonia region. The territory
measures 43 kilometers from northwest to southeast and covers around 336
km²; It has 1,811 (monastic) residents plus administrative employees,
police officers, business owners and a seasonally changing number of
civilian workers. In common usage, the term “(Mountain) Athos” stands
either for the entire Athos peninsula with the monastic state or just
for the actual mountain at the southeast tip of the peninsula, which is
2033 meters high.
In a geographical sense, the maximum 8.5 km
wide peninsula extends around 6.9 to 9 kilometers further west to the
isthmus, which was previously cut through by the Xerxes Canal.
The entire Athos peninsula is designated as a Natura 2000 Chersonisos
Athos protected area.
The Athos peninsula is the extreme eastern end of
the Chalkidiki peninsula. Its length from north-west to south-east
is about 60 km, width - from 7 to 19 km, area - 335.637 km².
The relief of the peninsula gradually rises to the southeast and
turns into a rocky mountain range, ending with the marble pyramid of
Mount Athos (height - 2033 m). In the place where the low-lying
isthmus turns into a hilly plain called Megali-Vigla (Greek Μεγάλη
Βίγλα - literally “Great Guard”), there is the city of Ouranoupolis
(Greek Οὐρανόπολις); to the east of it, since the 1920s, the
administrative border of the Holy Mountain passes (earlier it passed
northwest, along the "Xerxes Isthmus", a narrow strip of land 2 km
wide, along which the dry bed of the "Xerxes Canal" runs).
The bay between Athos and the Sithonia peninsula lying to the south
is called Ayon Oros (Greek κόλπος Αγίου Όρους) or Singitikos (Greek
Σιγγιτικός), the bay to the north of the Athos peninsula is the
Ierisos (Akantios) bay.
In the sea, a few kilometers
northeast of Athos, is the largest abyss of the Aegean Sea, with a
sharp drop in depth from 80 to 1070 meters.
The peninsula has
more than 20 capes, the extreme extremities in the south - Cape
Pines (Nympheon, Greek Νυμφαίον, St. George, Capo Santo), in the
east - Cape Akratos (Timios Prodromos, St. John the Baptist,
Smerna). The steep rocky shores have only a few large bays, the main
of which is Daphne, the port of the Holy Mountain, where ships from
the mainland arrive and where the customs, postal and police
stations are located. The administrative center of the Holy Mountain
- Karje (Karea) is located in the very center of Athos and is
connected to Daphne by a road.
Dirt highways, laid mainly
from the mid-80s of the XX century, lead from here to other ends of
the peninsula, vehicles are used mainly for the transport of goods.
The climate is subtropical (Mediterranean), with mild rainy
winters and hot summers. With the exception of the southern peak and
the rocks adjacent to it, almost the entire Athos is covered with
rich vegetation: spruce, chestnut, oak forests, dense bushes. There
are many plane trees on the lower part of the mountain slopes, in
the upper zone there are heather wastelands. Citrus fruits, apple
trees, pears, cherries, walnuts are grown here, vineyards and olive
tree plantations are planted. Snow rarely falls and does not last
long. The sources of drinking water are streams flowing down from
the mountains.
Although the beginning of the history of the monasteries and monastic
republics on Athos is occasionally traced back to early Christian times,
the first reliable evidence of monastic life on Athos can only be found
at the beginning of the 9th century in the Byzantine period.
The
history of the Athos monasteries is closely linked to the dispute over
the right monastic life, which flared up violently again and again in
Orthodoxy - and also on Athos: the hesychasm dispute between hesychasts
and Byzantine humanists. The spokesman for the hesychastic side was the
Athos monk Gregorios Palamas (1296/1297–1359), who saw complete inner
peace (Greek: ἡσυχία, hēsychía) in hermitic solitude through constant
prayer of the Jesus prayer as a prerequisite for the light of Jesus'
transfiguration , to see the so-called “Tabor light”. His theology
provided hesychastic practice with its theoretical foundation and
justification. Palamas defended hesychasm against the criticism of
Barlaam of Calabria, who criticized mystical practice and its
justification through the writings of Gregorios Palamas in the spirit of
a nominalistic humanism. At several councils in Constantinople between
1341 and 1351, the Byzantine Church decided to first condemn the
opponents of hesychasm and then to elevate the theoretical justification
of hesychasm by Gregorios Palamas (“Palamism”) to binding church
doctrine.
Since the 11th century, Mount Athos has also been of
great importance to the Christians of Kievan Rus. Monasteries for monks
from Rus emerged. From the 15th century onwards, the Moscow princes
contributed to the financing of the monasteries and founded their own.
They were subordinated to the Moscow Patriarchate from the 16th century.
At the turn of the 20th century, 550 years after the first major
disputes, the fundamental theological dispute over hesychasm between
realists and nominalists, between rationalist theorists and theologians
oriented towards mystical practice, continued. It went down in the
history of Athos and Orthodoxy as a dispute over the Imjaslavie
movement, the worship of the name of God. The dispute contributed
significantly to the decline of the “Russian Mount Athos”. Since the
monks opposed the Holy Synod, the state-controlled church leadership in
the Tsarist Empire, the Russian ambassador in Istanbul, with the help of
soldiers and firefighters, had more than 1,000 monks driven out of their
monasteries and deported to Russia.
A real estate scandal in 2008
involving the Vatopedi monastery brought down the Greek government. The
abbot of the monastery, Archimandrite Efraim, was arrested by Greek
police on December 25, 2011, and the monastery's assets were frozen.
Even in 2022, according to Vasilios Makrides, the undisputed
influence of the Russian Church on the monastic republic was still
considered significant and Russia was trying to expand its cultural
influence to the north of Greece. Russian state officials and oligarchs
attempted to use donations to strengthen certain clergy and the Russian
presence. There were reports about false monks and the fight against war
propaganda on Russian websites that called for “expulsions” of Russian
monks.
The 20 large monasteries of the Orthodox monastic republic are part
of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. The first monastery, the Great Lavra,
was founded in 963 by the Byzantine monk Athanasios Athonites. By this
time, monks had already settled on Athos, following the role models of
the ascetic monks in Ancient Egypt. Bulgarian, Romanian, Russian,
Georgian and Serbian monks soon founded other large monasteries on Mount
Athos. There were also Italian communities, e.g. B. that of the
so-called Amalfitans (after the city of Amalfi) south of the Karakallou
monastery, which, however, were abandoned in the 12th century. Today
there are 20 major monasteries, 17 of which are Greek, one Serbian
(Chílandar Monastery), one Bulgarian (Zografou Monastery) and one
Russian (Panteleímonos Monastery).
In addition to the
monasteries, there is a form of settlement on Athos called the Skites
(Greek: σκήτες), who each depend on their mother monastery and therefore
have no independent rights in the government and administration of the
monastic republic. Skiten, built around a central monastic building
whose buildings and functions are similar to larger monasteries, are
village settlements whose buildings are divided into Kalívia (Greek
καλύβια 'huts'), residential buildings for several monks, and Kelliá
(Greek κελλιά 'cells'), Huts for one resident can be distinguished. In
addition, monks settle in hermitages (Greek ησυχαστήρια, hesychasteria),
mostly small buildings and caves, on the difficult-to-access slopes of
Mount Athos proper.
The painters' workshops on Athos are famous,
and their great tradition of icon painting goes back to the High Middle
Ages.
Most monasteries used to be organized idiorhythmically. As late as
1986, the monks of Vatopedi wanted to maintain this lifestyle and
refused to accept younger monks from monasteries who had returned to the
koinobite lifestyle since 1980, as were the monastery-like Skites (for
example Skíti Prophíti Ilíou, Skíti Agíou Andréou, etc.). In contrast,
the monks in the village-like Skites (for example Néa Skíti, Skíti Agías
Annis, etc.) live idiorhythmically.
The monasteries continue to
follow the Julian calendar, which is now 13 days behind the Gregorian
calendar introduced in Western Europe in 1582 and in Greece in 1923. The
division of hours is also based on the Byzantine model: The day begins
at sunset (zero o'clock) (Italian hours); the monastery of Iviron alone
counts the hours from sunrise (Babylonian hours).
For a long time, getting around the mountain was only possible on
foot or with mules. In 1963, for the 1000th anniversary, the first
gravel road was built between Dafni, the port of Athos, which can be
reached by boat from Ouranopolis, and the capital Karyes. All 20
monasteries on Athos are now connected to the road network and are
regularly served by off-road vehicles or buses. However, some ski slopes
in the mountainous southern part of the peninsula are still only
accessible via mule trails or by boat. The peninsula is open to male
pilgrims but not to tourists.
“Newly converted” Russian oligarchs
and officials, including Sergei Naryshkin, formed an elite “Athos Club”
in the noughties, which led to the creation of luxury cottages with
resort infrastructure. The exorbitant donations from Russia were blocked
by Greece in the summer of 2022 after press reports claimed Athos was
being used as a reconnaissance and sabotage center.
The entry ban has been in force since 1045. Since then, women have
not been allowed to set foot on the peninsula. Ships with women on board
must keep a distance of 500 meters from the Athos coast.
Mount
Athos is also called to perivóli tis Panagías 'the garden of the Mother
of God' and in the theological sense is reserved solely for the supreme
saint of the Orthodox Church, Mary. Women are generally prohibited from
entering Mount Athos.
The woman on Mount Athos was a popular
literary motif in the 19th century, for example in the opera The Holy
Mountain (1914) by the Norwegian composer Christian Sinding. When Greece
was admitted to the European Community in 1981, the special political
and legal status of the monastic republic was recognized, but recently
the Ávaton has repeatedly led to controversy with the European Union;
The European Parliament last called for its abolition in a non-binding
resolution in 2003 with a narrow majority.
The Avaton was
repeatedly violated by women. This is the case of Helena, the wife of
the Serbian ruler Stefan Uroš IV Dušan in the 14th century: According to
legend, he wanted to protect her from the plague and therefore brought
her to the monks. To avoid breaking the law, she supposedly never set
foot on the ground - she was always carried around in a sedan chair.
French author Maryse Choisy was in Athos in the 1920s dressed as a
sailor (described in her book A Month Among Men). In 1953, Time magazine
reported on a Greek beauty queen who posed as a man and visited Athos.
In 1969, five Greek holidaymakers entered the Athos area on their own
initiative. A German tourist got lost in the monk state in 1989. In
January 2008, six Greek women crossed the border into the monastic state
in front of cameras to protest against the monks' territorial claims
outside of Mount Athos.
The ban on females on Athos also affects the keeping of domestic animals - apart from the ubiquitous cats, which provide some protection from mice, rats and snakes, as well as the numerous bee colonies. As pack animals, (male) donkeys, horses and mules are imported from outside if necessary. The oft-rumored story of chickens providing egg yolks for icon painters is obsolete in today's times of well-organized and motorized goods traffic on the Athos.
The monastic republic belongs to Greece under international law, but
enjoys autonomous status under constitutional law. This means that she
is responsible for some domestic political decisions and the
administration of the mountain. Likewise, Mount Athos is not part of the
tax territory of the European Union. Mount Athos is part of the Schengen
area. Each monastery is autonomous within the monastic republic and is
led by an abbot elected for life. Power lies with the 20 large
monasteries, on which small monasteries (Metóchia), monastic villages
(Skiten) and hermitages (Kelliá) depend.
In the small main town
of Karyes is the Church of Protaton and the building of the Hierá
Sýnaxis ('Holy Assembly'), which consists of the abbots of the 20
monasteries and carries out legislative and judicial functions. In
Karyes there are 19 kellia ('cells') in which the abbots are housed. An
exception to this is the Koutloumousiou monastery, as it is located near
Karyes and therefore does not need its own cell. Karyes is the seat of
the Hierá Koinótis ('Holy Assembly'), the 'parliament' to which each
major monastery sends a representative (antiprósopos, nominative). The
Prótos ('the First'), the annually elected chairman of the executive
branch, also has his seat there.
The state governor of Greece on
Mount Athos reports to the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs and,
together with some civil servants and police officers, is responsible
for complying with the constitution of Mount Athos and maintaining
security and order.
post
Postally, Athos belongs to Greece,
and there are two post offices on the territory that are operated by the
Greek Post (ELTA). With authorization from the Universal Postal Union,
Athos issued its own stamps from 2008 to 2017, which were only valid for
items posted there.
License Plate
Since 1983, Athos has issued
license plates for the few vehicles in use within its territory.
However, these were not valid or recognized outside. There has been a
new series since 2004. These license plates have the Greek banner on the
left with GR marking, but their own nomenclature (AO 999 99) and the FE
font, which is not used in Greece. They are valid worldwide and differ
from the other Greek license plates because the monastic republic does
not belong to the tax area of the EU.
In December 2005, the occupation of the Konáki (seat of the board of
directors of the Monastic Republic) by 20 monks from the Esfigménou
monastery made international headlines. In doing so, they protested
against the decision of the remaining 19 monasteries to no longer
recognize the representation of their monastery in the committees of the
monastic republic. The scandal was triggered in 2003, after decades of
simmering crisis, when the monks of Esfigménou accused the head of the
Orthodox Church, Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, of “betrayal
of Orthodoxy” because he had started talks with the Roman Catholic
Church. The patriarch then called on the rebels to leave the monastic
republic. The monks of Esfigménou ignored the demand. In December 2006,
a violent clash broke out when moderate monks attempted to evacuate the
occupied administrative complex. There were a handful of injuries, but
the occupation continues. The Greek government offered police and
military assistance, which the monks rejected. In August 2008, the monks
threatened to blow themselves and their monastery up if the police tried
to evacuate it. “Orthodoxy or death” is the motto of these monks of the
GOC (Church of the True Orthodox Christians of Greece), also known as
Zealots.
The monks continued to occupy the premises in 2022. When
asked by the NZZ, Abbot Bartholomew complained about the clandestine
movements of the supporters illegally across the country's borders;
Nobody knows exactly who is hiding in the occupied building. It is also
unknown what condition the centuries-old relics, books and icons are in
and whether they are even still there.
During a fire on the night of March 3rd to 4th, 2004 in the Serbian
monastery of Hilandar, two thirds of the monastery complex was destroyed
by flames. The cause of the fire may have been a smoldering fire in a
chimney in a monk's cell, from where the fire first spread to the guest
wing and then to the monks' living area. The entire guest wing (the
so-called archondaríki), the monastery's magazines, store rooms and
around 100 monks' cells were destroyed. The fire came to a standstill in
front of the monastery's defensive tower, which houses all the valuable
manuscripts, icons and liturgical devices. The central monastery church
(the so-called Katholikón) and the dining room (the so-called Trápeza)
were spared from the fire. Other causes of the fire, including arson,
were also discussed in media reports.
Although smaller fires
still had to be fought by the fire brigade, the monks were able to
celebrate their services in the Katholikón again from the evening of
March 5th. Just a few weeks after the fire, pilgrims were able to be
accommodated again. Former Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica
called for donations in his country to restore the monastery, and the
Serbian Orthodox Church also collected funds for the restoration.
The highest point on the Athos Peninsula is Mount Athos in the
narrower sense, a conical mountain range that is steep on all sides and
has only one clearly defined peak (2033 m). It rises directly from the
sea at the southeastern end of the Athos Peninsula and thus achieves a
height difference of over 2000 meters at the shortest horizontal
distance, which is remarkable for non-volcanic mountain massifs.
While Mount Athos breaks off with rugged walls to the north, the
southern flank offers good climbing opportunities. Coming from one of
the skites in the southern part of the peninsula or from the monastery
of Megistis Lavras, a clearly visible path leads from the Stavrós
crossroads via the bunker-like chapel of Panagía (1,500 m) up to the
summit. It offers no technical difficulties and is very varied and
scenic due to the different vegetation zones and the wide views out to
sea. Despite the modest height of 2033 m, Mount Athos definitely offers
alpine requirements, as it is very exposed and catches every change in
the weather, can surprise you with sudden snowfall even in summer, is
often covered in clouds during the day and in the early morning hours
the thermometer at the summit is often below zero Celsius falls. This
weather peculiarity has been known since ancient times, as it is
recorded that the Persian fleet was caught in a severe storm while
sailing around the Athos during the first campaign under Darius I, which
caused considerable losses. This is also the historical background for
the construction of the so-called Xerxes Canal in the north of Athos
near Ouranopoulos during the second attempt at invasion by the Persians
under Xerxes.
At the summit there is a small chapel, Metamórfosis
Sotíros (“Transfiguration of the Savior”), where once a year, on the
feast day of the Transfiguration of Christ (August 6th according to the
Julian calendar, August 19th according to the Gregorian calendar), an
all-night vigil (Agrypnía ) is celebrated.
Pilgrims who want to
climb the mountain can find emergency shelter in both the Panagía and
the summit chapel. Climbing Mount Athos does not require any special
mountaineering skills. In the summer of 2018, the summit chapel was
closed for construction work, with the entire summit plateau being
renovated and paved. At the summit, a vein of pure white so-called
Carrara marble emerges, some of which is being used for renovation. ♁40°
9′ N, 24° 20′ E