Top of your sightseeing agenda is likely to be the monastery of Ayíou Ioánnou Theológou (St John), sheltered behind massive defences in the hilltop capital of Hóra. There is a regular KTEL bus up, or you can do a forty-minute walk by a beautiful old cobbled path. To find its start, proceed through Skála towards Hokhlakás, and once past the telecoms building and the Millennium Internet Café bear left onto a lane starting opposite an ironmonger's; follow this uphill to its end on the main road - immediately opposite you'll see the cobbled path. Just over halfway, you might pause at the monastery of Apokálypsis (Mon, Wed, Fri & Sat 8am-1pm, Tues & Thurs 8am-1pm & 4-6pm, Sun 8am-noon & 4-6pm; free) built around the cave where St John heard the voice of God issuing from a cleft in the rock, and where he sat dictating his words to a disciple. In the cave wall, the presumed nightly resting place of the saint's head is fenced off and outlined in beaten silver.

 

This is merely a foretaste of the monastery of Ayíou Ioánnou Theológou (same hours and admission as Apokálypsis). In 1088, the soldier-cleric Ioannis "The Blessed" Khristodhoulos was granted title to Pátmos by Byzantine Emperor Alexios Komnenos; within three years he and his followers had completed the essentials of the existing monastery, the threats of piracy and the Selçuk Turks dictating a heavily fortified style. A warren of interconnecting courtyards, chapels, stairways, arcades, galleries and roof terraces, it offers a rare glimpse of a Patmian interior; hidden in the walls are fragments of an ancient Artemis temple which stood here before being destroyed by Khristodhoulos. Off to one side, the treasury (same hours; ¬3.50) justifies its hefty entrance fee with its magnificent array of religious treasure, mostly medieval icons of the Cretan school, but pride of place goes to an unusual mosaic icon of Áyios Nikólaos, and the eleventh-century parchment chrysobull (edict) of Emperor Alexios Komnenos, granting the island to Khristodhoulos.