First published: 19/06/14.

Clyde 1.5

Daphni, Hosios Loukas And Nea Moni Of Chios

Daphni, Hosios Loukas and Nea Moni of Chios (Inscribed)

Daphni, Hosios Loukas and Nea Moni of Chios by Clyde

I visited this WHS in June 2014. At first I had planned to only visit the Daphni Monastery due to its proximity to Athens' city centre. The monastery suffered from severe damage from an earthquake in 1999 and is currently being totally restored. It is accessible to visitors on Tuesdays and Fridays AM free of charge. The exterior is completely covered in scaffolding and there isn't much to see. What disappointed me most though was that a 6 lane highway is built just next to its perimeter and the noise from traffic is unavoidable. The interior is like a construction site and the only damaged mosaic worth mentioning is the one depicting Christ. The only plus side is that you get to visit up close on the scaffolding itself but that is not much of an advantage when viewing mosaics. Following my disappointing visit, I looked up Hosios Loukas. I found out that it is situated near Distomo, about 36km away from Delphi. Therefore I decided to go there before visiting Delphi and it turned out to be a very good choice indeed. The surroundings of Hosios Loukas are very pretty, overlooking a huge valley full of lined olive trees beneath Mt Helicon. The exterior itself is very well maintained and the whole monastery complex can be visited not only the church itself. However, the main highlight of my visit was definitely the church interior and crypt with splendid Byzantine mosaics and frescoes of Orthodox monks from the period of the Macedonian Renaissance.

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