Aghio Minas

Location

The Reverend Father Minas built this monastery between 1572 and 1595, at the time of Patriarch Jeremiah II, on a picturesque hilltop outside the village of Neohori. Initially monks lived there, but it was converted into a nunnery in 1932. During the Turkish occupation, it maintained a school and a noteworthy library.

This monastery is famous in world history for the holocaust of 1822: at that time, crowds of Chiotes were massacred by the Turks or burned inside the chapel and in the courtyard of the monastery. Today, there is still evidence of the victims of the Turkish atrocities as witness the bloodstained stone floors of the chapel. In the Mausoleum of the 40 Martyrs in the courtyard of the monastery are kept the bones of many of the victims.

There used to be about 35 nuns who were kept busy with crafts, hagiography and the sewing of ecclesiastical garments in the monastery. Today there are only 11.