Agia Napa Monastery description and photos - Cyprus: Ayia Napa (Topic)

Agia Napa Monastery description and photos - Cyprus: Ayia Napa. Detailed information about the attraction. Description, photographs and a map showing the nearest significant objects. The name in English is Agia Napa Monastery.

Photo and description

The monastery of the same name, located in the village of Ayia Napa, was built in the 15th century. It is believed that it was built after an ancient icon of the Virgin Mary was found in that place in a forest cave. The icon was probably hidden there as early as the 8th century, when the period of iconoclasm began in Byzantium. The found shrine was named "Madonna of the Forest", and later it was christened Ayia Napa, which means "Holy Forest". It was on the site of that cave that the Venetians erected a monastery, around which a settlement was gradually built.

After the Ottomans seized power on the island, the monastery continued to work, but was turned into a male one. But in the middle of the 18th century, it was abandoned and abandoned. And only in 1950, the Cypriot authorities took up its reconstruction.

The monastery is currently closed. Services are held in a small church built next to it in 1994. However, there you can see a beautiful small courtyard with a marble fountain built in honor of a noble Venetian woman whose grave is located next to it. As they say, the girl fell in love with an ordinary young man from a poor family. Her parents, on whose money the monastery was built, were, of course, against their marriage, so the unfortunate lover decided to become a nun. It was she, according to legend, who planted a tree on the bank of a small pond near the monastery, which still grows there. In addition, there are several beautiful chapels on the territory of the monastery complex.

Every year in September, the monastery hosts a cultural and religious festival, during which, on September 8, the temple holiday of Ayia Napa is celebrated - the day of the Virgin.

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Topic: Agia Napa Monastery description and photos - Cyprus: Ayia Napa.