VATOPEDI MONASTERY

Situated on the edge of a large bay on the peninsula's eastern coast, this renowned monastery (Ιερά Μονή Βατοπεδίου/Iera Moni Vatopediou) is home to the only ancient mosaics on Athos, as well as medieval frescoes and numerous icons, including the ^9th-century Panagia Paramythia. Legend has it that the Virgin and Child miraculously appeared here in the garrigue, giving the monastery, founded in the ^10th century, its name of "bushes of the Child". The complex was subsequently constantly extended. Today it is inhabited by around 120 monks, many of them Cypriots, and occupies second place in the Athonite hierarchy. The ^10th-century catholicon (main church) features remarkable frescoes painted in 1312, as well as three ^11th- and ^12th-century mosaics with golden backgrounds. Together with the mosaics in the Hosios Loukas (Boeotia) and Nea Moni (Chios) monasteries, which are also UNESCO World Heritage sites, these mosaics bear precious witness to Byzantine art of the "Palaeologus Renaissance" period. As you enter the narthex, the first thing you see is an elegant mosaic of the Annunciation scene. But this dates from the ^14th century and reproduces the same, older scene in the nave.

Deisis and Annunciation mosaics. The first of the three ancient mosaics occupies the semicircular lunette in the passageway between the exonarthex and the narthex. It depicts the Deisis, the intercession of Christ, the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist for the salvation of souls. It dates from the late ^11th or early ^12th century. Christ carries a scroll bearing a passage from the Gospel according to John ("I am the light of the world..."). And still in the narthex, above the entrance to the Agios Nikolaos chapel, the portrait of Saint Nicholas also dates from the late ^11th or early ^12th century. It was damaged during restoration, but retains a beautiful semi-circular frieze of acanthus leaves. Finally, in the nave, above the columns supporting the dome, the Annunciation scene probably dates from the ^mid-11th century: two 1.85 m-high paintings depict the Angel Gabriel on one side, and the Virgin Mary on the other. It seems that these works, along with the ^14th-century frescoes, overlay and reproduce a vast program of ^10th-century frescoes. In addition, across the northern half of the peninsula, Vatopedi has numerous outbuildings, including the Agios Andreas skite, a vast hermitage located 1 km north of the village of Karyes.