Saint Anthony

The Monastery of Saint Anthony stands beneath the Red Sea mountains, near the cave where Anthony the Great withdrew as a hermit. Springs watered a garden of palms and fruit trees within its walls, sustaining a community that became one of the great centres of Egyptian monasticism. The church preserves paintings begun in 1232–33 by an Egyptian artist named Theodore. In the late fifteenth century, an attack devastated the monastery and killed its monks. Syrian monks occupied and helped rebuild it in the early sixteenth century; Ethiopian and Egyptian monks later shared the restored house.