About the route
Toplou Monastery is one of the best-known fortified monasteries of eastern Crete. It rises from a bare, wind-swept plateau near Cape Sideros, some ten to eighteen kilometres east of Sitia depending on the road taken, and not far from the palm grove of Vai. Behind the high walls – a square enclosure about ten metres tall – church, cells, storerooms, galleries and outbuildings are bound together into a single closed whole of roughly 800 square metres; the place resembles a fortress, built to protect the community from pirates and from armed raids.
Name and foundation
Its full name is the Patriarchal and Stauropegial Monastery of the Panagia Akrotiriani and St John the Theologian of Toplou. The epithet Akrotiriani, “she of the cape”, refers to its position at the eastern end of Crete. The popular name Toplou comes from the Turkish word top, “cannon” – according to tradition on account of the gun that the Venetians installed for the monastery’s defence. The monastery was probably founded in the 14th century, with a church dedicated to the Nativity of the Mother of God.
A turbulent history
After repeated raids by Turkish corsairs in the 15th century – in 1498 they found the place undefended and sacked it – Toplou acquired its defensive character. The great earthquake of 1612 brought much of it down; Abbot Gavriil Pantogalos had the complex rebuilt with Venetian support, the Senate voting 200 ducats for the purpose in March 1613. The 17th century was a time of prosperity, in which the monastery owned extensive estates in eastern Crete and even in the city of Chandax, the present Heraklion. When eastern Crete surrendered to the Turks in 1646 the monastery was abandoned, and it came back to life only after 1704, when it was placed under the direct protection of the Patriarch – the meaning of the word “stauropegial” in its title. Under Ottoman rule it suffered continual harassment, and during the rising of 1821 some 24 monks and laymen were executed at the monastery gate; the buildings then stood empty until 1828 and were devastated again in the Cretan revolt of 1866. In later struggles for freedom, and during the German occupation in the Second World War, Toplou was once more a place of resistance: between 1941 and 1944 it sheltered resistance fighters and housed a clandestine wireless set.
Architecture and works of art
The buildings are arranged on three storeys round a small inner courtyard. Above the west wing rises a bell tower in the Renaissance style, dated 1558. The two-aisled church is dedicated to the Mother of God and to St John the Theologian. In it hangs an icon of Christ Pantocrator of the end of the 15th century, attributed to the painter Andreas Ritzos, and above all the celebrated icon “Megas ei Kyrie” (“Great art Thou, O Lord”), painted by Ioannis Kornaros in 1770: in 61 separate scenes it gives visual form to the text of the prayer for the Great Blessing of the Waters, and it is considered one of the masterpieces of late Cretan icon painting. The refectory has modern wall paintings by the icon painter Manolis Betinakis. Built into the façade is an ancient inscription preserving the arbitration in the dispute between Itanos and Hierapytna over the island of Lefki (Koufonisi).
The monastery today
Two rooms on the ground floor serve as a museum, with important icons, manuscripts, early printed books, documents and copper engravings from the 15th to the 19th century. The monastery is to this day one of the largest landowners in the region – the land at Vai belongs to it as well – and it cultivates vines and olives organically; wine, raki and olive oil of its own production can be bought in the monastery shop. An entrance charge is made.