Hosios Loukas

Hosios Loukas is a walled monastery on the slopes of Mount Helicon in Boeotia, and one of the three places in Greece, with Daphni and Nea Moni on Chios, where the art of the Middle Byzantine period survives in its most complete form. It grew around the tomb of a local hermit, Luke of Steiris, who died in 953 and was remembered for a prophecy that the Byzantines would retake Crete. After his death his relics were believed to exude a healing oil, pilgrims came to sleep beside the tomb in hope of cures, and their gifts paid for the buildings that stand today.

Two churches sit side by side. The smaller Church of the Theotokos, probably built in the 960s, is the oldest surviving cross-in-square church in mainland Greece, its walls a patterned mix of stone, brick and marble with decorative pseudo-Kufic motifs. Adjoining it is the larger katholikon, generally dated to the early eleventh century, the earliest known church of the domed-octagon type: a wide dome set directly on squinches over an octagon of piers, creating an unusually open, luminous central space.

The katholikon's interior is the reason to come. Its gold-ground mosaics, together with polychrome marble revetment on the lower walls, are the best-preserved ensemble of their era, and scholars have called the church the clearest surviving impression of what a Byzantine interior looked like in the centuries after Iconoclasm. The original Christ Pantocrator in the dome and the archangels between the upper windows are lost, but much of the rest survives, including mosaics around the saint's tomb that show the abbot Philotheos offering a model of the church to Luke. Below, reached by a stair on the south side, the crypt holds a complete programme of eleventh-century frescoes: Passion scenes, the Resurrection and dozens of medallion portraits, revealed in near-original condition when the chamber was cleaned in the 1960s.

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.

Getting there

Hosios Loukas lies near the village of Distomo, about 12 km from Livadeia. There is no direct public transport, so most visitors come by car or on an organised tour; there is parking just outside the monastery. Athens International Airport (ATH) is the practical gateway, roughly 165 km and a drive of two hours or more by road; the smaller Nea Anchialos airport (VOL) near Volos is about 92 km away in a straight line but has few international flights.