Athos, Monastery of Filotheos

Built on a plateau, 300 meters above the sea, in dense chestnut tree forest, the Monastery of Filotheos looks off the sea, Limnos and the torturous Imbros. It is dedicated to the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. On the verdant plateau, the Asclepieion is placed in the ancient times.

The monastery was founded by the hermit Filotheos in the 10th century. Nikephoros Botaneiates and the Abbot of Wallachia, Gregory Gikas, were its benefactors. After many tribulations it managed to flourish in the 18th century in whose cells the missionary Kosmas of Aetolia lived an ascetic life. However, a terrible fire of 1871 burnt it, leaving intact only a small part of it, including the pencil-covered catholic, with the ever-growing cypress tree that faithfully accompanies it. In the following centuries, the attempt, by Russian monks, to make the monastery Slavic did not succeed.

Inside the catholic, the Glykophiloussa, the amulet of a patrician, came from the City (Constantinople), traveling over the waves of the era of iconoclasm.