Monastery of Xeropotamou

On the western coast of the Athonite peninsula in Halkidiki stands the Monastery of Xeropotamou, a Byzantine foundation whose Greek name, meaning "dry river," hints at the landscape around it. It ranks among the twenty ruling houses of Mount Athos, the self-governing monastic republic where Orthodox tradition has been sustained for centuries. Its architecture and surviving treasures speak to that long continuity of worship and craft, and the site is recognized as an archaeological monument of Greece, a place where the spiritual and the historic feel inseparable.