Monastery of Iviron

The Monastery of Iviron, third in rank among the twenty monasteries of Mount Athos, was founded in 980 by John Tornikios, an Iberian monk and former Byzantine patrician. After a fifteenth-century financial crisis reduced its community to a handful of monks, donations from Romanian and Georgian rulers allowed a rebuilding phase at the century’s turn. The monastic tower that now dominates the south wing dates from this recovery: completed in 1513, as an inscription in the Catholicon wall records, it replaced an older defensive structure. Until 1804 it stood at the southwestern corner of the fortified enclosure with its protective barbakas, but expansion westwards from that year gradually absorbed it. A fire in 1865 destroyed much of the monastery, sparing only the three courtyard churches, the Trapeza and the tower, which needed merely repairs. A severe earthquake in 1905 left it ruined for nearly a century, with demolition sometimes contemplated, until restoration in 2002 returned it to its present form. The complex, on a small outcrop, retains its barbakas and a remnant of the southern wall; inside were five wooden-floored storeys above a basement.