Daphni, Hosios Loukas and Nea Moni of Chios

If it were not located next to a busy modern day national road one could imagine the Daphni Monastery to be located in Shakespeare’s Athenian forest with elves, kings and queens enjoying a pleasant Midsummer’s Night on the lush meadow among the pine trees behind one of the Greek capital’s most impressive buildings of the Middle Byzantine period. The site was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1990, together with the Monastery of Hosios Loukas near Delphi, and Nea Moni on the island of Chios.

We visited on 1 May 2022, a day when Athenians come out to the country side to celebrate spring, enjoy lunch with the family and friends, and bring back flowers and wreaths to their homes.    

Already when it was first built in the 6th century, the monastery was erected on an important road, the ancient Sacred Way - the Iera Odos, and served as a way station to Eleusis and farther to Corinth and the Peloponnese. It is the site of the sanctuary of Apollo Daphnaios which was destroyed by the Goths in the 4th century. It is mentioned in the little museum that of the old temple only one column of the narthex remains, while the others were removed by Lord Elgin and are now in the British Museum. The missing columns were replaced by white marble replicas. Throughout the centuries after the fall of the Byzantine empire the monastery suffered looting and damage. After the Ottoman conquest of Athens …

Two Visits to Nea Moni of Chios

I stayed in Greece over 2 months in October and November 2020 in my attempt to live in corona-free zones. When I planned this back in September, Greece was indeed one of the least infected countries in Europe, although as soon as I got there, the infection rate skyrocketed.

After visiting Daphni in Athens a day after visiting Bassae, I flew to the island of Chios, the birth place of Homer, to stay there for one month. I was aware that one of the three sites that comprise this WHS was on some island in the Aegean, but after visiting Daphni I didn't pay much attention. So when I realized that Nea Moni was indeed on the island of Chios, I was surprised and said I had to go visit. 

It was ridiculously difficult to visit Nea Moni, located deep in the mountains, with public transportation, not just because of the scarcity of it, but also because of Nea Moni's sporadic opening hours. Not only they close in the middle of the day, but also they were not even following the official opening hours listed by the Ministry of Culture.

At my first attempt to visit Nea Moni the Chios tourist office, which was surprisingly open at this time of pandemic, gave me the same opening hours as the ministry of Culture. The bus dropped me off on the main road at 15:40, from where I had to walk …

The Byzantine monasteries of Daphni, Hosious Louas and Nea Moni were built in the 11th century, in what amounted to the peak of Roman power and also the beginning of the ultimate demise. Around the turn of the millennia, the Romans had pushed the Arabs out of the Eastern Anatolian border regions and recaptured parts of Armenia and Syria, protecting their Anatolian heartlands against the incessant Arab raids of previous centuries. On the Balkans, Emperor Basil II, aptly nicknamed the Bulgar Slayer, had subdued the Bulgarian Empire in a decades spanning war. When he died in 1025 CE, the Empire was as powerful and large as it hadn't been since Justinian.

A mere 50 years after the death of Basil II, though, in 1071 CE the historic battle of Manzikert resulted in the Romans losing control of most of of their Anatolian heartlands to the Turks. The Romans would only continue to control the coastal towns. Nowadays, most historians consider Manzikert the beginning of the end of the Roman (Byzantine) Empire.

Daphni was built after Manzikert in 1080. I wonder how the Romans of the period perceived this epic event marking a turning point in history. Probably, it didn't occur to them that they had just witnessed the beginning of the end. If you are interested, I can recommend the Byzantine History Podcast.

In how far it impacted their architecture is hard to tell. It would be interesting to compare all three inscribed sites and see the …

Short update from my return visit to Daphni monastery in July 2019, when almost all the scaffolding was removed (only mosaics 24-29 are not clearly visible due to restoration work in progress). The entrance is still free and the monastery is now open from Wednesday to Saturday, from 11:00 till 15:00. The mosaics are amazing and unbelievably well preseved given that they date back to the 11th century. Mainly the ceiling is covered with remaining mosaics, but the original interior probably fully covered with golden colorful mosaics was likely to be something exceptional.   

Of the three geographically dispersed monasteries inscribed together as this WH site, we could only fit one into our Greek itinerary in July of 2018, and our choice fell on Hosios Loukas, the largest and likely the oldest. Hosios Loukas’s fame derives from the lavish decorations of its main church, the Katholikon. These mosaics, frescoes, and marble surfaces date from the 11th century, and are among the best examples of the grand church decoration during Middle Byzantine Renaissance. In addition to the main church, you can visit the crypt, peruse an archaeological collection, learn quite a lot about the history of the monastery itself, and step into a model monk’s cell. Around an hour is quite sufficient to take it all in, but the visit can be extended: there are hiking paths on the mountain around the monastery and a nice shaded terrace with outdoor cafe seating area and great valley views just outside the gate.

Hosios Loukas is located a little bit over 2 hours drive northwest from Athens in the administrative region of Central Greece. Delphi is about further half an hour drive northwest, easy to combine on a day-trip from the capital. It should be noted that Monastery of Daphni, another of the three properties grouped in this site, is located right at the edge of Athens, accessible by public transport (less than 40 minutes from the center of the city). We drove by it, but could not fit a reasonably-timed stop into our schedule.

The Monastery of Daphni is part of the WHS Monasteries of Daphni, Osios Loukas and Nea Moni. All these 3 medieval Greek monasteries contain gold-coloured mosaics that are valued as masterpieces of Byzantine art. The monastery of Daphni, located just outside Athens, is an easy one to access and that’s the one I choose for my visit too. It took about 45 minutes to see it all & even combined with a return trip from and to Athens city center it costs less than 2 hours of your time.

Together with a Russian couple that also wanted to visit Daphni, I left the city bus in a suburb of Athens. Many buses will stop near the monastery, see the official website for the range of bus lines. I used a one-day Ath.ena ticket to pay, it covers the metro rides as well. It was somewhat of a search for the entrance, but then we were faced with a heavily secured monument. Access is prevented by a large iron gate and a high fence that fully encircles the former monastery. Would it still be closed today (= Friday)? No: it turned out that you can ring a bell and then the gate will open automatically.

They have been restoring this world heritage since 1999. It is almost finished, but not yet completely - hence the limited opening times (Tuesdays and Fridays) and free entrance. Workers are busy still on the excavations outside of the main church. We were kindly …

As indicated in previous reviews, for many years it has only been possible to make very limited visits to the Monastery of Daphni, situated in the Western suburbs of Athens, both in terms of when it has been open and in what could be seen when you got there. The building has had a very chequered life having been sacked by the Franks, been used as a barracks and an asylum and enduring numerous earthquakes. The latest of these in 1999 (9 years after inscription) led to a major restoration project which resulted in the monastery becoming a building site. Most photos on the Web show it completely encased in scaffolding. In recent years it has only been open for limited hours on Tuesdays and Fridays. WHS travellers should know, however, that the situation has improved and that it might be worth their while including a visit to it in any future visit to Athens.

This limited opening was still the situation when we visited it in Oct 2017. However, I can report that all external scaffolding has now been removed and that, internally, there is only a small area still undergoing work in the Narthex which hardly detracts from what is on show - not much different from preservation work one will find in many WHS. Those who visit Athens from now on should be aware that a visit will provide excellent views of the restored mosaics – well worth the “free entry” which still applies! Indeed if you …

Of the three sites, I have visited Hossios Lukas near Delphi, and Nea Moni on the island of Chios. As others have reviewed Hossios Lukas I shall attempt to describe Nea Moni:

The site is located high in the mountains in the centre of the island. Construction of the church started in the 11th centuary, although little of this remains. It was built in the Macedonian Renaissance style by Constantine IX upon his becoming emperor of Byzantium. The mosaic ceilings are a spectacular feature of the interior decoration.

The church was dedicated to Theotokos, and at its peak held 800 monks. However as a result of earthquakes, the depredations of the Genoese and then the Ottomans, and finally being sacked and looted in the War of Independance in 1822, the population has dwindled to a handfil of nuns.

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 …

I have been once to the beautiful monastery of Hosios Luckas, a great masterpiece of the late Byzantine art, one of the three Greek monasteries forming this WHS. The hermit Saint Luke the Stiriote lived here, on the western slopes of the Helicon, isolated in a landscape of olive trees, from 946 until his death in 953, among the ruins of a temple of Demeter, and built here a church dedicated to Saint Barbara (946-955); in the 10th century an another church was built for the pilgrimages of great enduring success, visiting his tomb. Since the 14th the monastery belong to the Cistercians, that dedicated the monastery to the Virgin and maintained it as it was. It was damaged by various earthquakes and by the bombardments of the Second World War. It has a large pentagonal enclosure and extends on an east-west axis bearing traces of successive additions. The monastery has many minor buildings, like the bell tower or the monks’ cells, but the main complex is really stunning. To the north-east there is the church of Theotokos, built on that of Saint Barbara. It is very different in style from the church of Katholikon, because it was reconstructed by the Cistercians, that dedicated it to the Virgin, linked it by a porch with cross vaults to the cells, built a slender octagonal drum and decorated the interior very simply, also with the floor made of nice marble slabs. The crypt of the second primitive church, that contains the tomb …