Treasures of Mount Athos

Mount Athos is not only a community of monasteries; it is also one of the world’s great treasuries of Christian heritage. Over a thousand years the monasteries have accumulated wonderworking icons, relics of saints, fragments of the True Cross, ancient Gospel codices, liturgical vessels, vestments, and the foundational charters of Byzantine emperors and Serbian kings.

In this section we describe five of the most venerated treasures. The Holy Belt of the Mother of God, kept in Vatopedi, is the only physical relic of the Virgin Mary preserved in the Orthodox Church; its periodic translations to Russia have drawn pilgrims by the millions. The Iveron Icon of the Theotokos (“the Gatekeeper”), kept at Iveron Monastery, is one of the most venerated Marian images in the Orthodox world, with a celebrated copy enshrined for centuries at the Iveron Chapel by Red Square in Moscow. The Axion Estin icon, kept at the Protaton in Karyes, is associated with the angelic revelation of the prayer of the same name in the tenth century. The manuscript collections of the Athonite libraries — particularly at the Great Lavra, Vatopedi, and Iveron — contain irreplaceable Greek, Slavic, and Georgian codices, many of them the oldest surviving witnesses to their texts. The relic collections of the monasteries include parts of the True Cross, fragments of the robe of Christ, and the bones of countless saints.