Monastary

Have you ever met a monk? Did you know that monastaries are still going strong? In this day and age, a monastic life seems passe and somehow obsolete. A visit to this monastary (Agia Triada) showed us that monastic life can be liveable, while still maintaining the traditional austere lifestyle amid simple surroundings. In fact, by taking away all the noise of everyday life, the beauty of the place and people living in and visiting the monastary took center stage. We took pictures of the architecture and shied away from taking pictures of the monks, as we thought it might be disrespectful. Take a look and see if you think the monastary is as quietly beautiful as we thought it was...

Here's the entrance. Most Greek Orthodox monastaries have walls around them and resemble a fortress of sorts. This was a feature added in to protect their freedom of religion from occupying forces with different religions, especially from those of the Muslim Turks. To gauge the kind of oppression that inspired this sort of wall-building, Arkadi monastary is a good example. Something like the Greek version of the Alamo, a small group of Greeks holed up in a monastary and held out for days before a vastly superior Turkish army group seeking their surrender and submission to Islam. Rather than surrendering, they blew themselves up in a large explosion in their gun powder room. Those that survived were tortured and killed on top of Christian Icons that were taken down from the monastary's church walls. Those same icons still exist and hang in the church today, and if you visit, you can see the blood stains from those horrible acts.

The long peaceful tree-lined route to the monastary.

Just inside the monastary walls. The monks' cells are the doors visible here. Did you know the biology term "cells" is based on the small closely spaced rooms that monks occupy by the same name?

Here's the actual church. Everything outside looks dirty and worn down by time. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but everything inside was very well card for. The icons had silver on them and were bright and shiny. And my favorite part was the ceiling. It's painted a dark azure blue and is decorated with small 6 point gilded stars all over. And if you look on the ceiling of the main dome, you can see a picture of Christ peering in from above, as if you're occupying a doll house He's playing with.

Beautiful architecture features mixed in with well-kept plants. One of the things we love everywhere we go in Europe is the trust that's placed in us to be careful on our own. In America, it would be mandatory to have guard rails along the stairs, and all kinds of caution signs everywhere. I think the European mindset is that if you're clumsy enough to fall off stairs like these, AND you don't have the sense to not use them, then perhaps you deserve to fall off them.

Everywhere we went inside the walls, it seemed as if there were so many little quiet places set aside to just stop and think or pray.

This is the back side of the church. The tall tower is the one that has Christ looking in painted on the ceiling.

We thought the palms were beautiful with the old monastary's architecture.

Another cell door.

The iron work above the main entrance was simple, pretty and as we've seen in Italy before, somehow "tastefully and artfully neglected."