Saint Catherine's Monastery

Justinian fortified the site in 565 around a chapel Helena had built at the traditional Burning Bush. The monastery has never been sacked — partly thanks to a charter of protection tradition attributes to Muhammad himself, a copy of which is displayed. Its library holds some 3,300 manuscripts; the Codex Sinaiticus was found here in the nineteenth century. The icon collection survived the iconoclasm that destroyed almost everything else.