Monastery of Great Cave

The Monastery of Mega Spilaio (Great Cave) clings stubbornly to a spacious cave at the base of a vast, sheer rock face of Mount Chelmos, at an altitude of 940 metres. Built in 362 AD by the Thessalonian monk-brothers Saints Symeon and Theodore, it is considered the oldest monastery in Greece. The cave gave the monastery its name and is where the icon of the Panagia was found, attributed by tradition to the Evangelist Luke, worked in wax and mastic on a board and slightly deformed by fires. The katholikon, a cross-in-square church carved into the rock, preserves frescoes from 1653 in the main nave and early 19th-century frescoes in the narthex, along with marble inlaid floors, a carved wooden iconostasis and an older pulpit. The monastery played a significant role in the 1821 War of Independence and during the Occupation of 1943, and still guards precious relics: national costumes, manuscripts with miniatures, gold crosses, icons and the omophorion of Chrysanthos Notaras.