16 June 2009 | A new exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris makes it possible to partly unveil the mystery of the holy Mount Athos, presenting some 200 objects from the peninsula to a wide audience, including women who are still banned from setting foot in the all-male monastic stronghold.

Most of the objects included in the exhibition have never left Greece before. They include an impressive array of treasures, such as icons, liturgical vestments, chalices, reliquaries, illuminated manuscripts, medallions and mosaics. According to experts, some of the most spectacular items on display are chrysobulls -- imperial decrees with golden seals.

In addition, a catholicon, or central church of one of the monasteries, has been reconstructed to give visitors a feeling for the peninsula’s medieval architecture.

As BalkanTravellers.com wrote, Mount Athos is a self-governed monastic community under the protection of Greece, composed of 20 monasteries scattered around a territory of more than 300 square kilometres. Built over a period of roughly 700 years (eight to the fourteenth centuries), nearly half of the monasteries date from the tenth century.

“Mount Athos could be dismissed as a historical curiosity, the last remnant of the once mighty Byzantine Empire, if it didn’t house one of the richest treasures of religious art in the world,” Jorg von Uthmann, a critic for Bloomberg News, wrote in a recent review of the exhibition. “Since the 1980s, a European Union-funded effort to catalogue, protect and restore them is under way -- a massive task that will take decades before it is completed,” he added.

The exhibition “Le Mont Athos et l’Empire Byzantin” runs through July 5 at the Petit Palais in Paris.

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