Description of the attraction
The New Athos Monastery is a male monastery located in the city of New Athos at the foot of Mount Athos. The New Athos Monastery was founded by the monks of the Russian St. Panteleimon Monastery in 1875. The construction of the monastery was carried out according to the project of the famous architect from St. Petersburg N. N. Nikonov. The charter of the New Athos Monastery was approved in 1879 by Tsar Alexander II.
The monastery is one of the most magnificent works of the neo-Byzantine style in the territory of Abkhazia. The monastery complex includes six temples. The most magnificent of the buildings of the monastery is the cathedral, consecrated in honor of the great martyr Panteleimon. The north-western part of the temple is decorated with a 50-meter bell tower, under which there are the refectory, painted with frescoes.
The solemn consecration of the main altar of the monastery took place in 1888. Emperor Alexander III, who was present at the ceremony, presented the temple with musical chimes, which to this day adorn the bell tower. In the place where the meeting of the king and the abbot of the monastery took place, a chapel was erected, and the path along which the emperor walked from the pier to the temple, the monks called the Tsar's Alley and planted it with cypresses.
The New Athos Monastery has become the largest religious center on the entire Caucasian Black Sea coast. The monastery farmsteads were located in Novorossiysk, St. Petersburg, Sukhumi, Yeisk, Tuapse, Pitsunda and the high-mountain village of Pskhu. A parish school and several factory enterprises worked at the monastery. In addition, the monastery had its own railway.
In 1924 the monastery was closed for “counter-revolutionary agitation”. During the Soviet era, the monastery was abandoned for a long time, after which the monastery premises were used as warehouses, a tourist recreation center, a local history museum and a military hospital. The monastery began to revive only in 1994.
In 2008, renovations were carried out in the New Athos Monastery, and a year later new domes sparkled on the main cathedral.
