Saint Catherine's Monastery

A monastery is a place where monks live, work and pray together.

This one is in Egypt, in a valley between rocky mountains. Monks have lived here for about 1,500 years.

Saint Catherine's Monastery is in the south of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, at the foot of a mountain called Mount Sinai, or Jebel Musa in Arabic. The land around it is dry and rocky, with cool winters and hot summers.

A monastery is a place where monks live and pray together. Monks have lived here since the 500s, and UNESCO says it is the oldest Christian monastery still used for its original purpose. The mountain above it is important to Christians, Muslims and Jews, whose traditions link it with Moses. The monastery belongs to the Greek Orthodox Church.

The monastery lies in the rugged mountains of southern Sinai, in an area with about 60 mm of rain a year. It is the centerpiece of the Saint Catherine Area, a World Heritage Site inscribed in 2002 that covers 601 km² within the larger Saint Catherine Protectorate.

UNESCO describes it as the oldest Christian monastery that has kept its original function without a break since its foundation in the 6th century, and as one of the very early outstanding examples, in the Eastern tradition, of a Christian monastic settlement in a remote area. The area is, in UNESCO's words, of immense spiritual significance to Christianity, Islam and Judaism: the Old Testament places Moses receiving the Tablets of the Law on this mountain, which Muslims know as Jebel Musa. The monastery is the property of the Greek Orthodox Church and is self-governing, led by an abbot who holds the rank of archbishop.

Inside the walls is a church with a bell tower.

Right next to it is a small white tower, called a minaret. It belongs to a little mosque. The monks also keep very old books and paintings.

Look over the walls and you can see two towers side by side. One is the stone bell tower of the church, built in 1871, with nine bells given by the ruler of Russia. The other is the small white minaret of a mosque, built inside the monastery walls between 1101 and 1106.

The monastery is famous for its library. When experts studied it for its World Heritage listing, it held more than 3,000 handwritten books, called manuscripts, and more than 5,000 early books. It also has more than 2,000 icons, religious paintings, in styles from the 500s to the 1700s.

The Fatimid mosque, south-west of the basilica, is a rectangular building 7 by 11 m and 7 m high, with a small minaret at its northern corner and three mihrabs (prayer niches) in its qibla wall. ICOMOS records that it fell out of regular use in the later 13th century, was restored in the early 20th century, and was still used on special occasions by local Muslims. The neo-Classical bell tower beside the church was built in 1871 by the monk Gregorius and holds nine bells presented by the Tsar of Russia.

ICOMOS counted more than 3,000 manuscripts and more than 5,000 early books in the library, which it called the oldest in the Christian world, and more than 2,000 icons representing almost every school of Byzantine icon painting from the 6th to the 18th century. The Old Refectory, a dining hall with a Gothic vaulted roof, has wall paintings from the Crusader period and the 16th century.

Outside the walls, the monks grow a garden.

They carried soil here to grow olives, apricots and cherries. Tall mountains rise all around.

Outside the walls is the monastery garden. Over many years the monks brought in soil and built tanks to store water, so they could grow fruit trees such as olives, apricots, plums and cherries, and vegetables too.

Above the monastery rise two peaks. Mount Moses is 2,285 meters high, and Mount Catherine, at 2,642 meters, is the highest peak on the Sinai Peninsula. A path leads up Mount Moses past old stone arches and the ruins of small chapels. Many visitors come, and UNESCO warns that crowds, rock slides and rare flash floods are risks the monastery must manage.

The triangular garden outside the walls was created over many years by monks who brought in soil and built irrigation tanks; it holds olives, apricots, plums, cherries and vegetables. ICOMOS adds that a constant supply of fresh water comes from a fountain that taps an underground spring.

The World Heritage Site also covers the surrounding mountains: Mount Moses (2,285 m), with a mosque and a chapel on its summit and a path to the top lined with two stone arches and ruined chapels, and Mount Catherine (Jebel Katrin, 2,642 m), the highest peak of the Sinai Peninsula. UNESCO's summary names large numbers of well-intentioned tourists, rock slides and rare flash floods as risks, calls the modern town of Saint Catherine the only discordant feature, and describes conservation work against rock slides, repairs to the walls, a new visitor circuit entered through a new side-wall entrance, and an inner museum that was being built inside the monastery.