Moni Gonias Monastery - West Crete

Gonia Monastery one of the best-preserved Monasteries of Crete.
The Monastery Gonia is situated 700 m westawards to the Coastal village Kolymbari. The Monastery was built 1618, it looks like a fort and has a three apse Catholicon church and two chapels.
The monastery has been an attraction for numerous monks and hermits and flourished in the last decades of Venetian rule. It was conquered by the Ottomans in 1645 but had the good fortune of being under the administration of significant men of the church (like Isaias Diakopoulos), who not only preserved its fortune, but introduced the teaching of Letters and Arts at its premises. Before the Ottoman looting, the monks had arranged to send 40 valuable icons away from the monastery to other Greek territories. Today the museum of the monastery one can admires the wealth of its icons and manuscripts.

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