Mount Sinai see · Mount Sinai attractions
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Mount Sinai attractions
Mount Sinai attractions
The Monastery of St. Catherine, at the foot of the mountain, is the easier of the two destinations here. Looking more like a fortress than a church, access is through a massive iron gate shut for the night and opened in the morning from 9 AM to 12 AM only (daily except Friday and Sunday). Note that the monastery observes the Greek Orthodox rites and is thus also closed for Christmas and Easter as calculated by the Greek Orthodox calendar.
Church of St. Catherine. The main church of the complex, completed in 551.
Basilica. Famous for a mosaic of the Transfiguration (as of 2008/07/Feb 2011 in restoration and not in public).
Moses' Well. A spring that supplies water to the monastery and, according to legend, the location where Moses met his wife for the first time.
Library. One of the greatest repositories of ancient manuscripts in the world (second only to the Vatican), housing over 4500 rare volumes. No access without special permission (granted only to VIPs and bona fide scholars).
Ossuary. This morbid charnel house contains the skulls of 1400 years' worth of monks who have lived and died here.
On Feb 2011, there is only a few parts of the monastery which are accessible to tourists.
There is also a small museum mainly about bizantines icons / tempera on wood. You need to make a 25egp donation as entrance fee but it is worth it.
A guide for the monastery could started at 100egp but you could/must bargain.
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Mount Sinai Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.