About Monastery of St John the Theologian

The Monastery of St John the Theologian is a Greek Orthodox monastery founded in 1088 by Agios Christodoulos Latrinos and funded by a grant from Byzantine emperor Alexios Komnenos I. Since its founding, the monastery has served as a place of pilgrimage and learning.

Architecture and Buildings

The monastery is built on the top of a small mountain. It looks like a Byzantine castle and was built like a fortress with thick walls and heavily reinforced door due to frequent attacks by pirates and other invaders. The first buildings are the catholicon (the main church), the Chapel of Panagia (Virgin Mary) and refectory. The catholicon is built where a temple of Artemis and later an early Christian Basilica used to be. The monastery has 10 chapels, three of them are outside the boundaries of the monastery.

Library

The walls of the library are covered by dozens of wooden stacks for manuscripts and early printed monographs. The library is home to more than 1,200 handwritten codes, more than 13,000 documents and more than 4,500 ancient and early printed monographs.

Museum

The museum houses valuable objects, superb icons, ecclesiastical utensils, sacred relics, vestments embroiled with silver or gold threads and bejewelled with precious stones and various garments that constitute the treasury of the monastery.

‍