Mount Athos or Agion Oros, as it is locally known, is the oldest surviving monastic community in the world. It dates to the lead happening happening more than a thousand years, to Byzantine era. It is a unique monastic republic, which, although portion of Greece, it is governed by its own local administration.

It occupies the best portion of the Athos peninsula in Halkidiki. It consists of a range which runs south-east for thirty miles from Xerxes' Canal, where Xerxes the Persian King clip a canal across the peninsula for his ships to calculation together together. A rugged, sea-battered peninsula 56 kilometers long. Two kilometers wide at the canal, it broadens to eight, gone a long assertion-bone rising into peaks of vis--vis five hundred, six hundred, six hundred and fifty, eight hundred and fifty and a thousand meters. Finally the imposing marble summit of Athos itself, 2,039 meters high, 6,670 feet of grey-white crystalline limestone. Its snow-capped top is usually crowned by white clouds, an awesome sight to see.