Monastery of the Analipseos of Sotiros

Near the village of Sykea in Elassona, next to the refugee settlement of Analipsis, is the Monastery of the Analipseos of Sotiros (Ascension of Christ), which was initially dedicated to the Dormition of the Virgin Mary and officially it has both names.

The monastery was founded in the middle of the 17th century, according to the inscription over the door of its catholicon, which mentions that the church was built and the icons were made in 1650 by the monks Ioakeim and Ioannis and the priest-monk Dionysios, when the archbishop of Elassona was Germanos. The monastery had great property and important contribution to the education of the people of the area, as tradition indicates for the operation of an underground school, as well as the funding the construction and the maintenance of a school at the village of Sykea. During the years of the Greek Revolution and the Macedonian Struggle, it provided material and moral help to the fighters, while it also contributed to the reception of the refugees after the Asia Minor Catastrophe, since in 1924 its property was divided among the people of the area. Initially it was a men’s monastery and was the metochi of the Monastery of Palaiokarya until 1932, when it was abandoned. It was torched in 1943 by the German troops and was destroyed again by fire in 1965. Nowadays, it has been reconstructed and since 1988 it has functioned as a women’s monastery.

The complex is surrounded in all its four sides by a precinct and two-storey buildings that house the cells, the hostels and the auxiliary areas of the monastery. At the centre of the yard there is the catholicon, a cross-in-square church, which belongs to the Athonite type,   in other words it has also conches to its side walls. At its interior there survives the initial wall painting, from 1650, while the impressive, wooden-carved, gold-plated screen dates from 1766. On the western and southern side of the church there is a narthex, built at a later date, and the small chapel of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary, which is decorated with icons from the 18th century.

The monastery possesses a modern ecclesiastical museum and celebrates on the day of the Ascension of Christ.