Gardiki monastery

The monastery at Gardiki, south of the village of Amfeia in Messinia, is a castle-monastery in very good condition, dominated by a renovated tower. Its origins reach back to the late 14th century, but the complex was entirely rebuilt around the end of the 17th century, during the second Venetian period. The tower itself likely dates from this reconstruction. Following the Greek War of Independence in the 19th century, the monastery was abandoned. In 1957, however, both the monastery and its tower were renovated, and the church used the site as a hospice until 1977. The tower must have undergone significant repairs during that mid-century work, and the extent to which these altered its original form remains uncertain. What stands today is a well-kept relic of post-Byzantine monastic fortification, its history a matter of careful inference rather than firm record.