Mount Athos

Mount Athos occupies the easternmost of the three peninsulas of Chalkidiki, in north-eastern Greece, and culminates in the peak that gives it its name, at 2,033 metres, which drops almost directly into the Aegean. The mountain and most of the peninsula are governed as an autonomous monastic community within the Greek state, a status it has carried since Byzantine times.

It has been the spiritual centre of Orthodox monasticism since the eleventh century and holds twenty principal monasteries, as well as sketes, kellia and hermitages scattered across the peninsula, with architecture and an art collection of extraordinary value. The avaton, the rule forbidding entry to women and to minors, has been in force for some thousand years; male visitors need a specific permit, limited in number.

UNESCO inscribed it in 1988 as a MIXED property, under cultural criteria and under natural criterion (vii), and the preservation of the peninsula's natural environment was precisely one of the arguments for the inscription. The isolation and the restrictions on access have preserved one of the best-conserved Mediterranean forests in the Aegean, with holm oak and chestnut woods and deciduous forest on the upper slopes, as well as a fauna that has benefited from the absence of hunting and of urban development. The inscribed property covers 33,042.3 hectares, with no buffer zone.