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The Byzantine monastery of Nea Moni in the hills of Chios

Nea Moni: eleventh-century mosaics, inland on Chios

Nea Moni is an eleventh-century monastery inland from Chios Town, and its Byzantine mosaics are UNESCO-listed together with Daphni and Hosios Loukas as one property rather than three.

Nea Moni was founded in 1042, in the eleventh century, and it sits inland from Chios Town.

An at a glance card for Nea Moni. What it is: A Byzantine monastery. Founded: The eleventh century. The reason to go: The mosaics. Also there: A chapel of remains. Setting: Inland, in the hills. One row is marked out as the thing that decides the visit. The conclusion reads: Eleventh-century mosaics, and a harder history beside them. No prices appear.
Eleventh-century mosaics, and a harder history beside them.

Diagram by Greece Trips. Free to reuse with credit - CC BY 4.0.

We print no inscription year and no criteria, because our own guide prints neither.

Why the mosaics matter

The mosaics are the reason for the listing, and the reason a monastery on an island most international visitors skip sits in the same inscription as Daphni outside Athens.

We describe what is there rather than cataloguing the iconography - our sources do not, and a mosaic programme is not something to summarise from memory.

The island around it

Chios is famous as the only place on earth where mastic is commercially grown, in the fortified medieval villages of its south such as Pyrgi and Mesta - and for Nea Moni.

It is a large, uncrowded North Aegean island close to the Turkish coast, toured by car rather than walked from a single beach, at roughly 840 square kilometres.

The other layers our guide names: Kampos, a district of roughly 200 walled estates with citrus orchards, mansions, cisterns and monumental gates, laid out under the Genoese after 1346.

The harder history

Our own guide files Nea Moni under “Nea Moni, the massacre, and the island’s deeper history”.

We name that framing and go no further here. The events it refers to are a serious matter and our sources set them out on the island guide rather than on a page about a building; read our Chios guide for the island’s own account rather than a summary written around it.

Practical notes

Getting there: Chios is toured by car. A ferry from Piraeus six to seven days a week year-round, around eight hours direct; a short flight from Athens; or the Cesme crossing from Turkey, 20 to 30 minutes, year-round.

When: May, June and September, with early September the pick. August is hot and busy, largely with domestic and diaspora visitors.

We print no opening hours or entry price. It is a monastery.

Common questions

When was it founded? 1042.

Why is it UNESCO-listed with two mainland monasteries? The three are inscribed as a single property. Our guide gives no inscription year or criteria and neither do we.

Is it near the mastic villages? Nea Moni is inland; the mastic villages are in the south. Both are car journeys on a large island.

Next

Our Chios guide has the practicalities and the island’s deeper history, things to do in Chios covers the villages, and the beaches cover the coast.