Monasteries of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul

Saint Anthony'S Is Held To Be The Oldest Christian Monastery In The World, Built Around The Cave Where Anthony Went Into The Desert In The Fourth Century And Started The Monastic Idea; Its Church Carries Thirteenth Century Wall Paintings Cleaned In The 2000s, And Saint Paul'S Lies Over The Mountain 25 Km Away · Zafarana, Red Sea

In the late third century a Copt called Anthony walked away from the Nile valley into the Eastern Desert, lived in a cave in a cliff, and attracted enough followers that a monastery grew below him - which is why Saint Anthony's is generally called the oldest Christian monastery in the world and why the monastic idea itself is usually traced to this piece of desert. It is still a working house: walled, whitewashed, with gardens and a spring inside the enclosure, and a church whose thirteenth-century wall paintings were cleaned and consolidated in a long conservation project that finished in the 2000s. They are extraordinary and almost unvisited. Anthony's cave is a climb of something over a thousand steps up the cliff behind. Saint Paul's monastery lies twenty-five kilometres away over the mountain, smaller and built around another cave. Both sit between the Nile and the Red Sea, which makes them an easy detour from Hurghada and a long day from Cairo. Monasteries close to visitors during fasts.

In the Eastern Desert below the Galala plateau, reached from the Zafarana road between Suez and Hurghada, Zafarana, Red Sea, Egypt

Both monasteries receive visitors in daylight hours and both are working communities rather than sites, so the Coptic calendar governs everything: THEY CLOSE TO VISITORS DURING FASTING PERIODS, including much of Lent and the Advent fast, and the dates move each year - confirm before travelling, because a wasted drive out here is three hours each way. Services are not visited as a spectacle. Dress is enforced at the gate: covered shoulders and knees for everyone, and a headscarf for women is expected inside the church. Men can sometimes stay in the guesthouse by arrangement. The climb to Anthony's cave is open in daylight and takes well over an hour. Access is by car from the Zafarana junction on the Red Sea road; there is no public transport to either gate.

Monasteries of Saint Anthony and Saint Paul on Spottos · Explore more places on Spottos