Monasteries & Deserts

Where silence became a vocation.

5 destinations

Saint Catherine, Egypt

The oldest continuously inhabited Christian monastery, guarding the Burning Bush and a library second only to the Vatican's.

Wadi El Natrun, Egypt

The Nitrian desert where Christian monasticism was invented — four Coptic monasteries still working the same ground.

Kalambaka, Greece

Six surviving monasteries balanced on sandstone pillars three hundred metres above the plain of Thessaly.

Karyes, Greece

A self-governing Orthodox peninsula of twenty monasteries where the Byzantine calendar still runs and no woman may enter.

Bethlehem Governorate, Palestine

A fifth-century lavra hung on the cliffs of the Kidron gorge, still lit by oil lamps and still refusing women at the gate.

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