Perched barely forty metres from the sea on Crete's southern coast, the Monastery of Koudouma is one of the oldest foundations in this wild corner of the island, a Byzantine sanctuary reached only with difficulty below the heights of Kofina peak. Its remote setting west of Cape Martelo has long defined it, and that isolation endures: the community of Sternes counted just six registered souls here in 2011. Windswept, stark and close to the water's edge, the monastery offers the traveller a rare encounter with a place where centuries of devotion and the sea's own austerity meet.
Coordinates and heritage data compiled in the Atika atlas.
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