The Most Beautiful Monasteries in Greece
10 places · updated 14 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful monasteries in Greece are Hilandar, Hozoviotissa monastery and Daphni Monastery. The list covers 10 monasteries. Last updated 14 October 2026.
Greek monasticism sought the edge of the world: cliffs, islands and rock pillars where monks could live between earth and sky. Byzantine faith and Aegean light gave these places whitewashed walls, frescoed churches and some of the most extraordinary sites ever chosen for a building.
The Panagia Hozoviotissa on Amorgos is a narrow white wall pressed into a sheer cliff high above the sea. Simonopetra on Mount Athos rises several storeys from the top of a rock outcrop, its wooden balconies hanging over the drop. Varlaam is one of the monasteries of Meteora, perched on a sandstone pillar that monks once reached by ladder or rope and net. Hosios Loukas in Boeotia stands on a quieter slope, but its 11th-century mosaics on gold ground are among the finest Middle Byzantine art anywhere.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hilandar | Monastery | |
| 2 | Hozoviotissa monastery | Monastery | |
| 3 | Daphni Monastery | Monastery | ✓ |
| 4 | Nea Moni of Chios | Monastery | ✓ |
| 5 | Simonopetra Monastery | Monastery | |
| 6 | Iviron Monastery | Monastery | |
| 7 | Great Lavra | Monastery | |
| 8 | Monastery of Saint John the Theologian | Monastery | ✓ |
| 9 | Hosios Loukas | Monastery | ✓ |
| 10 | Varlaam monastery | Monastery | ✓ |
01 Hilandar
Greece40.340° N 24.121° E
Image by mirkosajkov from Pixabay The centrepiece of the courtyard is the main church, rebuilt by King Stefan Milutin around the turn of the 14th century in the Byzantine manner, with frescoes painted around 1320 and renewed in the early 1800s. The monastery's most revered treasure is the icon of the Three-Handed Mother of God, which tradition says Sava brought from the Holy Land and which the brotherhood regards as its true abbess. Its library keeps around a thousand Slavonic manuscripts, a priceless record of medieval Serbian and South Slavic literature. In later centuries Bulgarian monks were prominent here, among them Paisius, whose name 'of Hilendar' recalls the house.
Did you know? The brotherhood regards the icon of the Three-Handed Mother of God as the monastery's abbess.
02 Hozoviotissa monastery
Μονή της Παναγίας της Χοζοβιώτισσας
Greece36.835° N 25.910° E
Apenauta at Italian Wikipedia · Public domain Amorgos is the easternmost of the Cyclades, a long, mountainous island with fewer than two thousand inhabitants, whose rugged coast featured in Luc Besson's 1988 film The Big Blue. The Virgin of Hozoviotissa is the island's patron, and her feast is kept on 20 and 21 November.
Did you know? Every Easter the miraculous icon of the Virgin is carried in procession through the villages of Amorgos.
03 Daphni Monastery
Μονή Δαφνίου
Greece · 9 km from Piraeus38.013° N 23.636° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Sp!ros · CC BY-SA 4.0 The monastery was badly damaged by the Athens earthquake of 1999 and remained closed for many years while the structure and mosaics were restored.
04 Nea Moni of Chios
Νέα Μονή Χίου
Greece · 7 km from Chios38.374° N 26.056° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
RomkeHoekstra · CC BY-SA 4.0 Around the church lie the ruined cells, the refectory, a large underground cistern, the chapel of St Luke, a defensive tower once used as a library, and a small museum opened in 1992. The walled complex covers some 17,000 square metres, and the approach road climbs through the mountains with views across the sea towards the coast of Asia Minor. It is still a convent.
05 Simonopetra Monastery
Ιερά Μονή Σίμωνος Πέτρας
Greece40.190° N 24.247° E
Original uploader was Michalis Famelis at en.wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0 In the twentieth century the community dwindled almost to nothing, until 1973, when a group of monks from the Great Meteoron monastery at Meteora, led by Elder Aimilianos, settled here and revived it. Today it ranks thirteenth in the hierarchy of the Athonite monasteries and is home to around fifty monks. Its choir became known far beyond Athos through recordings of Byzantine chant, above all the hymn "Agni Parthene" released in 1990, which carried the sound of the monastery's services to listeners around the world.
Did you know? The fire of 1581 killed a large part of the brotherhood, and the abbot Evgenios travelled to the Danubian principalities to raise money for rebuilding.
06 Iviron Monastery
Greece40.246° N 24.285° E
Unknown author Unknown author · Public domain The monastery's greatest treasure is the icon of the Virgin known as the Portaitissa, "she of the gate". According to local tradition, the icon was cast into the sea to save it from the iconoclasts and drifted to this shore, appearing on the water in a column of light; a Georgian hermit named Gabriel is said to have walked out across the waves to bring it in, and a spring of water rose where it touched land. The legend continues that the monks placed it in the main church, only to find it each morning hanging above the gate, until they built a chapel there for it.
Did you know? In the Middle Ages Iviron was a leading centre of Georgian scholarship, where Greek religious texts were translated into Georgian.
07 Great Lavra
Greece40.171° N 24.383° E
Dimboukas at en.wikipedia · Public domain The monastery is also a storehouse of the written past. Its library holds more than two thousand Greek manuscripts, including early uncial copies of the New Testament, and its archive is the most complete of any house on Athos, preserving imperial charters from the founding era onward. Among its treasures is a gospel book with a golden cover traditionally held to be a gift of Nikephoros Phokas. In the courtyard, a huge cypress beside the main church is traditionally said to have been planted by Athanasius himself. With the rest of Mount Athos, Great Lavra was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988.
Did you know? Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas funded the first buildings for his friend, the monk Athanasius.
08 Monastery of Saint John the Theologian
Μονή του Αγίου Ιωάννου του Θεολόγου
Greece37.309° N 26.548° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Valeria Casali · CC BY-SA 3.0 Below Chora is the Cave of the Apocalypse, where tradition places John's visions and which shares the UNESCO listing. A marked footpath climbs from the harbour at Skala to Chora in around 45 minutes. As an active monastery, it expects modest dress.
09 Hosios Loukas
Μονή Οσίου Λουκά Βοιωτίας
Greece38.395° N 22.746° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
Panosmyr · CC BY-SA 4.0 The monastery has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. Its terraces look out over a quiet valley of olive groves, and it combines naturally with Delphi, about 35 km away.
Did you know? The plan of the Theotokos church closely copies the Lips Monastery in Constantinople, bringing a fashionable capital design to rural Boeotia.
10 Varlaam monastery
Μονή Βαρλαάμ
Greece39.725° N 21.630° E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by MichelleCoppiens from Pixabay Meteora as a whole, with its six surviving monasteries, was inscribed by UNESCO in 1988. Varlaam is about a ten-minute walk from the Great Meteoron, so the two are easily combined.
Did you know? The tower with its windlass and net dates from 1536, and the hoist was still in regular use for supplies in the early 1960s.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented — the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful monasteries in Greece?
- On our list, Hilandar ranks first, followed by Hozoviotissa monastery and Daphni Monastery.
- How did monks reach the Meteora monasteries?
- For centuries they climbed removable ladders or were hauled up in nets with a winch; steps were cut into the rock only in the 20th century.
- Which monasteries are famous for Byzantine mosaics in Greece?
- Hosios Loukas, Daphni near Athens and Nea Moni on Chios, inscribed together on the UNESCO list for their mosaics of the 11th century.
- How many monasteries are on this list in Greece?
- The list covers 10 monasteries.