Greece - Korina Miller [232]
Secular Athos is visited by a few package tourists, but more so by Greek families. Here visit Ammoliani, a tiny island with fine beaches, domatia, camping and tavernas. Five to six daily ferries go there from Trypiti on the south coast.
OURANOUPOLI ΟΥΡΑΝΟΥΠΟΛΗ
Ouranoupoli is a low-key tourist village with good nearby beaches, and it’s the jumping-off point for Athos’ monastic community. Besides daily ferries for pilgrims, it has daily sightseeing boat cruises (per person €20; 10.30am) that circle the Athos Peninsula – giving females, who are banned from monastic Athos, a chance to see something. Alternatively, hiring a boat (€40) lets you visit the sandy, uninhabited Drenia archipelago, 1.9km offshore.
Sleeping
Ouranopoli Camping ( 23770 71171; camp sites per adult/tent €9/9; 20 May–30 Oct) A decent, though pricey camping ground; it’s on Ouranopoli’s northern beach side.
Xenios Zeus ( 23770 71274; www.ouranoupoli.com/zeus; s/d/tr €40/55/65; ) A friendly, family-run place on the main street, Xenios Zeus has clean and comfortable rooms, and will hold unnecessary luggage for monastery pilgrims. Members of the Britain-based Friends of Mt Athos (www.athosfriends.org) get a discount.
Lazaros Andonakis Rooms ( 23770 71366; s/d €45/55; ) This reasonable choice has airy, pine-furnished rooms, some with harbour views. To get there, continue 50m seaward from the Pilgrims’ Office.
Mt Athos (Agion Oros) Αγιο Ορος
More than a millennium of unbroken spiritual activity has been taking place on the isolated southeastern part of Halkidiki’s third finger, at the monasteries of Agion Oros (the Holy Mountain). A semi-autonomous monastic republic that still follows the Julian calendar, along with many other Byzantine edicts and mores, the Holy Mountain consists of 20 working monasteries and smaller skites (dependencies), with a few very old-school, remote mountain hermitages still inhabited by the odd ascetic. An enormous World Heritage Site that occupies most of the Athos Peninsula, Mt Athos is formally a part of the Greek state, though ecclesiastically it remains under the Orthodox Patriarchate of Constantinople (İstanbul).
Apocryphal legends say that the Virgin Mary herself visited Athos and blessed it; the Holy Mountain is considered the Garden of the Virgin, and it is dedicated exclusively to her – meaning there’s no room for other women. Although frustrated Eurocrats in Brussels have contested this prohibition, they’ve proven no match for more than 1000 years of tradition and the gold-sealed chrysobulls (decrees) of Byzantine emperors, whose names are still invoked in prayers and whose edicts continue to be respected.
For men, visiting monastic Athos requires advance planning (see Getting the Permit, opposite). Visits are restricted to four days, though with special permission they can be extended – a worthwhile effort, if you have the time.
Experiencing the monasteries is wonderfully peaceful – and tiring. In many hosting monasteries, you follow the monks’ lifestyle, eating and attending services (even at 3.30am) with them, and generally respecting the monasteries’ customs. Walk in the still Athonite forests and down worn trails that connect the monasteries, and marvel at their architecture and art treasures, and perhaps enjoy the simple hospitality and anecdotes of the wise old monks over a Greek coffee or raki (Greek firewater).
HISTORY
Ever since Byzantine times, ascetics gravitated towards rugged, inaccessible Athos. Gradually, a loose community formed. Emperor Basil I’s AD 885 chrysobull confirmed Athos’ special status. In 943, the monastic territory’s extent was officially mapped. Some 20 years later the Holy Mountain was formally dedicated, when Emperor Nikoforos II Fokas funded the Moni Megistis Lavras – the biggest, if not the first, monastery.
The monastic community flourished