Monastery of Timios Prodromos

At a beautiful location on the slopes of the Pieria mountain, near the river Aliakmona and a few kilometers south of Veria is the Skete, which is known as the Monastery of Timios Prodromos (St John the Baptist) and is related to prominent figures of Greek monasticism.

The monastery was created in an area scattered with caves that were the place where ascetics lived and the foundation of the core is connected with the presence of the local saint, osios Antonios from Veria, who lived in the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century. As an organized monastery it is mentioned to documents from the beginning of the 14th century, when Agios Gregory Palamas settled here. The periods of its heyday were the 14th and the 16th century. In around the middle of the 14th century it was visited by osios Athanasios Meteoritis, before the foundation of Meteoro, while in the end of the 14th century it is known that it had a lot of monks. In 1523 Agios Dionysios the Younger came here, who converted the ascetic life to cenobitic one and renovated the church, while in the end of the 16th century osios Theofanis the Young, patron saint of Naoussa, became associated with the monastery. In the 17th and the 18th century, according to references in official documents, the monastery is patriarchal and stauropegic, but also from the end of the 18th century the first signs of its decline started to become obvious. In 1819 its property assets were sold by the Turks and in 1822, during the revolt of Macedonia, it was completely destroyed by Lubut pasha. It was reconstructed and restored by 1835 an then it took the form that it has today, with the exception of the auxiliary areas that were built in the decade 1960s.

The monastery complex preserves almost nothing from its initial form. The only building that survived the destruction of 1822 is the chapel of the Transfiguration of Christ, which dates from the second half of the 18th century. At its interior survive fragments from wall paintings that are damaged by fire. The catholicon belongs to the type of the simple three-aisled basilica and it is undecorated on its interior.

The monastery has hostels and it keeps sacred relics there. It is a men’s monastery and it celebrates on the 29th of August the translation of the head of John the Baptist, while on the 22nd of July it celebrates all the saints that were monks or ascetics at its area.