Machairas Monastery

In the mountains of Kionia, about 40 kilometres from Nicosia, Machairas monastery — Panagia Machaira — looks out over the slopes of the Machairas valley. Its name comes from the Greek μαχαίρι, knife, for reasons bound up with how its icon was found.

The cave, and the blade

The tradition holds that an unknown hermit brought to Cyprus an icon of the Virgin Mary painted by the Apostle Luke, and hid it in a cave on the mountain. In 1145 two other hermits came upon that cave, but had to cut their way through thick growth to reach it. That is how Machairas got its name — and how the icon came to be called the Machairiotissa.

A royal monastery

The monastery stands at 870 metres and was given ownership of the whole mountain. It was built in the 12th century and enlarged in the 13th by the monk Neilos, its first abbot, who later became Bishop of Tamassos. Grants over the years made it wealthy: Machairas is one of the three royal monasteries of Cyprus, alongside Kykkos and Agios Neophytos, all three granted privileges in the Byzantine era.

Fires in 1530 and again in 1892 destroyed the buildings completely; donations from the Russian Empire allowed them to be rebuilt.

What you find there

The architecture is plain — a rectangular building under a red-tiled timber roof, with the monks’ quarters built around the church. Between twenty and thirty Orthodox monks live here, supported by their own agricultural work.

Next to the monastery is a museum dedicated to Grigoris Afxentiou, a fighter in the struggle for independence from British rule, and below it stands a large bronze memorial to him.