
Vlatadon Monastery
Working Byzantine monastery with fourteenth-century frescoes, peacock gardens and sweeping harbour views.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Vlatadon Monastery in Thessaloniki starts with the peacocks in its garden and an old Christian belief about their flesh, reaching back to Saint Augustine and his own small experiment. It follows the two Cretan brothers whose name the monastery carries, the frescoed church with its portrait of Saint Gregory Palamas, and the Ottoman years. Best heard in the garden, close to the birds.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Holy Church of the All-Great Taxiarchs
Two-storey Byzantine monastery church with a burial crypt and brick-patterned east wall.
Holy Church of Saint Nicholas Orphanos
Fourteenth-century Byzantine monastery church with vivid, near-complete Palaiologan frescoes.
Holy Church of Saint Panteleimon
Late Byzantine cross-in-square monastery church with patterned brickwork and surviving side chapels.
Holy Church of Saint Catherine
Late Byzantine brick church with fourteenth-century frescoes, once an Ottoman mosque.
Latomos Monastery - Holy Church of Hosios David
Fifth-century Byzantine chapel with a rare apse mosaic of a youthful Christ seated on a rainbow.
Church of Prophet Elijah
Fourteenth-century Byzantine church of striped brick and stone, later a mosque, high above the harbour.