Monastery of Saint John the Theologian

Seen from the sea, the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian looks less like a religious house than a castle: a mass of grey battlemented walls on the summit of Patmos, with the white houses of Chora wrapped around it. It was founded in 1088, when the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos granted the island to the monk Christodoulos, who fortified it heavily against pirates and Seljuk raids. The town grew up around its walls, and monastery and town have lived as one ever since. Together with the Cave of the Apocalypse, they were inscribed by UNESCO in 1999.

The monastery is dedicated to John of Patmos, the author of the Book of Revelation, who according to the text received his visions while living on the island. Pilgrims have been coming for more than nine hundred years, and the monastery remains a working community of monks where Orthodox services of great age are still celebrated.

Inside the gate, a maze of courtyards, stairways and arcades opens around the katholikon, the main church, a domed cross-in-square building from the 11th century with a marble opus sectile floor and medieval wall paintings. The refectory is of the same age; the two-storey arcade on the south side was added in 1698. The monastery's library is one of the most important in the Orthodox world, with at least 330 manuscripts, 267 of them on parchment, including 82 manuscripts of the New Testament. From the roof terraces the view spreads over the whole island and the scattered Dodecanese around it.

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.

Getting there

The monastery is in Chora, about 5 km by road from the port of Skala. Patmos has no airport: the nearest are Samos (SMI), about 53 km away, and Kos (KGS), about 75 km away, from where the island is reached by boat — check seasonal ferry schedules. Year-round ferries from Piraeus take roughly 7.5 to 12 hours. From Skala, buses, taxis and the footpath lead up to Chora.