MOUNT ATHOS, the easternmost of the three prongs of the peninsula of Chalkidiké, has been for centuries the "Holy Mountain" of the Orthodox Church. Pious, or at least penitent, Byzantine, Trapezuntine ...

The skulls, lined up five deep on wooden shelves, date back hundreds of years, with the names of the more recently deceased scratched onto their foreheads — Monk Theolothelis, 91, 26-6-1986, or Monk ...

Mount Athos, in northern Greece, is a place steeped in a truly unique history. The tree-swathed slopes of the “Holy Mountain,” as it is commonly called, encompass 127 miles on the coast of the Aegean ...

You know you’ve arrived somewhere special when you’re greeted by hundreds of yellow butterflies fluttering in the breeze. We woke to this spectacle each morning during our stay at Eagles Palace Villas ...

The World Heritage Committee decision taken at its 32nd session (Quebec City, 2008) while noting with satisfaction the continuous efforts between the national authorities and the leadership of the ...

It was while visiting Mount Athos, more than a quarter of a century ago, that I first heard the Soviet Union would collapse—and would do so in my lifetime. There, in northeastern Greece one ...

But the Autonomous Monastic State of the Holy Mountain is a place apart. For almost as long as there have been monks here, women have been barred — considered a distraction and undue competition for ...

A Protestant’s journey among the monks of Mount Athos. When you first arrive at a monastery on Mount Athos, the traditional center of Eastern Orthodox spirituality, the first thing you do is knock ...