Culture of Patmos Island. Places to visit - old town, temples, theaters, museums and palaces

Patmos is known throughout the world as the "Island of the Apocalypse". It was here, as the legends say, where in one of the caves in the first century of our era John the Theologian received a revelation about the End of Times. The Cave of the Apocalypse is today a place of pilgrimage for many Christians from all over the world. Nearby is the temple of St. Anne and the monastery of St. John the Theologian, built in the 11th century and still acting. The latter gave shelter to the Church Museum of Patmos. Here you can find clothes of priests embroidered with gold and silver, and old icons, and ancient books, and liturgical texts. Near the museum, there is a library of holy scriptures and manuscripts. Patmos Church Museum is the largest and most visited on the island.

Patmos is sometimes called the "Island of a thousand temples". This is not surprising. After all, there are more than five hundred churches and monasteries here. In some of them, for example, the convent of Zodohu Pigi, anyone who wants to learn about the life and way of life of the black clergy is allowed. The Evangelismos Monastery is very interesting from the point of architectural solutions and having risen together with the excursion to the monastery of Profitis Elias, you can see the magnificent panorama of the island. With good weather, you can see the neighboring Leros and distant Turkey.

However, Patmos can interest tourists not only with a large number of temples and monasteries. The island was inhabited before our era, and the proof of this can be found in the ruins of the Chlakokratias settlement near the Aspris port. In the bay itself, there are the ruins of a fairly large city. Some scientists believe that this is the ancient Platis Gialos, the others still hesitate – there is not enough evidence. Nevertheless, here you can see the remains of a two thousand years old settlement. There are also the ruins of the Apollo temple on the island and the ancient sanctuary of Peter sto Grieco, which, however, is already mostly destroyed. Copyright www.orangesmile.com

The ancient Acropolis can be found in the archaeological park of Kastelli Patmos. It is located on the outskirts of the capital of Patmos. In addition to the Acropolis, you can see here the ruins of several temples and other buildings of the ancient Greeks and Romans. The entrance to the park is free. Acropolis can be seen in the village of Skala. It was created by the hands of the Hellenes but was also used later – it is believed that it was where that St. John baptized the first locals, who were converted to Christianity.

There are also objects on the island that can tell about the later period of its history. For example, the Simandiri mansion, located in the capital city of Patmos. Here you can see the samples of household items and adaptations for folk crafts of the 14th-16th centuries. In the Nikolaidis mansion, besides the interior items, typical for the houses of the local residents in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, one can find a small collection of ancient artifacts found on the island.

It's worth spending some of your time on a walk through the streets of the port city of Skala. Though it is quite young, as they started building here only from the 19th century, when the threat of pirate attacks passed, it is on these streets where you can see many fine examples of a century-old architecture. It is worth wandering around the capital city of Patmos or Chora. It was already founded in the 12th century and since then it has been fairly reconstructed. The settlement reached its greatest flourishing in the 16th and 18th centuries, and so far in the streets of Chora, you can find many beautiful mansions of this era. This is where the monastery of Ion the Theologian is located, which can be taken for a massive fortress from afar. No wonder here, as the monastery is the most powerful fortification on the Aegean Sea islands.