There are five villages which straddle the southern tip of Mount Athos, Cape Nymphaeum. It is built on cliffs sometimes at altitudes above 800 m. At the half-hour march from the Skete of St. Anna Little, the rocky coast, near ascetic Reels and about 400 m higher perch as Katounakia. At a distance of half an hour to the east at a height of 600 meters is built on the old Hermitage and St. Basil’s end, 800 m above the south eastern coast, a level ground on the edge of a ravine above the sea, is the Cherry.

 

The famous spools on the north side of the cape offers a great view. Among vertical rocks reach the sea, the retreatants built their huts in small cracks and ledges of the cliff. The Reel name is appropriate, because the hermits who live and pray here in complete isolation, between sky and sea, using ropes and rollers (pulleys) to lift ships from the baskets with their simple supplies.

 

Little higher than the settlement that leaves people in awe on the southwestern slopes of Mount Athos, on a plateau level ground on the rocks in one of the most beautiful places of the Holy Mountain, is built as Katounakia. Here live and work hagiographers-monks and among them the Daniilaioi, ie the brainchild of Daniel who in 1875 founded a retreat, a prayer retreat in this beautiful place. Although he had chosen to isolate, corresponded with prominent personalities of the spirit, as the Mother Superior Theodora, who later donated the money for the marble tomb of a hermit in retreat. After the death of the founder of the retreat developed into one of the hagiographic schools Athos followed the rules state that “Performance art of painting.” In Katounakia at an altitude of 500 m, Kalives belonging to the Great Lavra, surrounding the church of St. George.

 

Among Katounakia and Cherry, at an altitude of 700 meters, is built the small church of St. Basil and clustered around a few huts. The Skete of St. Basil is attached to the steep side of the mountain, whose summit, 200 m above the Hermitage, crowned with the tiny church of Prophet Elias.

 

The very striking, almost vertical hillside, creating chills of fear and awe in the visitor, forms 800. above sea level, a sheltered valley with gentle slopes where cherry blossom. Here is the same name Hermitage. Originally inhabited by Russian monks, but now there is just some Greeks. One of the first known Western European travelers to Athos in the 18th century Falmeraier, wrote about the Cherry “prestigious of all is the position of Kerasias -10 Kalives pyknofyta nesting in forests, 800 vertical meters above sea level. A magical place!” The monastic settlement surrounding the church of Saint George and throughout the desert, lies the Monastery of Great Lavra.