They were built this way in order to withstand piratical raids during the Crusades, which threatened to strip them of gold and religious relics. The monasteries look like medieval castles as one approaches them. Considered to be the Virgin Mary’s private garden, no other women are allowed to step foot upon its shores. It is home to twenty ruling monasteries and some 2,000 monks.
Athos juts out like a crooked finger into the azure Aegean from the Greek mainland.
I am on the Holy Mount, and am anxious to begin writing. The sun has just extinguished itself into the sea and the warm night settles down on the monastery like a smooth blanket.
As the thick reinforced door shuts behind me, closing out the secular world, I listen to the silence and breathe in the smell of pine and ocean.
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