Qualla: Saint Ephraim Monastery, Nea Makri

Saint Ephraim Monastery, Nea Makri: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1945, a nun named Makaria Desypri walked the slopes of a quiet hill east of Mount Pentelicus and started clearing rubble where, she believed, she had been told to dig. What she uncovered were the ruins of a monastery that had stood here long before anyone living could remember. Five years later, she found something stranger still: a grave, and inside it the bones of a man who had been dead for 524 years. The mountain had a name from the old days, the "mountain of the pure," and on it she rebuilt a community that the centuries had nearly erased.

Saint Ephraim Monastery, Nea Makri: The Mountain of the Pure

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mount Amomon rises in the Xilokeriza area of Attica, its lower flanks rolling toward the sea at Nea Makri. The name itself is a clue to the place's character. Centuries ago, when many small hermitages dotted these slopes, the hill was known as the mountain of the pure, a refuge f...

Saint Ephraim Monastery, Nea Makri: The Saint Who Was Lost

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The man in the grave was Ephraim, a monk martyred on this hill in the 15th century, his memory swallowed by the long Ottoman silence that followed. When Makaria discovered his relics on 3 January 1950 and his shroud earlier still, she gave Greek Orthodoxy a saint it had forgotten...

Saint Ephraim Monastery, Nea Makri: An Artist's Unfinished Gift

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Walk into the courtyard and you find the tomb of Fotis Kontoglou, the painter and writer who, more than anyone, revived the Byzantine style in 20th-century Greek art. He chose to be buried here. To the left of the church entrance hangs his portable icon of Saint Ephraim, and it i...