10 January | Around a dozen Greek women entered the Mount Athos male-only monastic community on Tuesday in protest over land ownership, thus defying a 1,000-year ban, international media reported.

The female protesters jumped over the fence in defiance of the ban, which is upheld by the Greek constitution. The group was reportedly part of around 1,000 demonstrators who oppose claims by several of the monasteries to around 20,000 acres of land on the Halkidiki peninsula, Reuters reported.

Local mayors and residents of different Halkidiki villages dispute the monasteries’ large real estate portfolio outside the Mount Athos borders, which includes hotels and land on Halkidiki and other assets in the Greek capital Athens and in Thessaloniki.

The Halkidiki peninsula is among the most popular tourist destinations in Greece. A part of Greece’s northern mainland, on the Aegean Sea, the peninsula consists of three separate parts – the western one, Kassandra, Sithonia in the middle and Agion Oros.

The easternmost Agion Oros, meaning ‘Holy Mountain’, is regarded as the spiritual home of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The 20 monasteries scattered around Mount Athos, including a Russian, Serbian and Bulgarian monastery, form a self-governing monastic community with strict visitation rules, including a complete ban on female visitors.

Media reported that this was not the first time the ban on female visitors was violated, though it seems like it was never done so blatantly. Women tourists and archaeologists, sometimes dressed as men, have set foot on the peninsula in the past decades, according to Reuters.

Litsa Ammanatidou-Paschalidou, a Member of Parliament, was among the defiant women who trespassed. She told media that the Athos land claims were based on titles dating back to the Middle Ages and Ottoman rule and that land disputes are common since Greece does not have a complete national land register.