At the island’s centre, Nea Moni is a World Heritage–listed 11th-century Byzantine monastery. Once one of Greece’s richest monasteries, it attracted pre-eminent Byzantine artists to create the mosaics in its katholikon (principal church). Disastrously, during the Greek War of Independence (1821–29), the Turks torched the monastery and massacred its monks. Their skulls are now kept in a glass cabinet inside a chapel to the left of the main entrance.
Another catastrophe occurred in 1881 when an earthquake demolished the katholikon dome. Nea Moni is now a convent.
