Saint John cave or Katholiko

The cave of Saint John the hermit or aka the Ksenos cave is located near the “avlaki” gorge in Akrotiri only a few hundred meters away from the bear cave in the isolated Katholiko monastery and near the Gouverneto monastery.

In the same way as the bear cave, this cave also used to be a river basin with total length of 135 metres in the shape of a a horizontal gallery.It is richly embellished in many laces with stalagmites and stalactites.

At the very start and the very end of the cave there are sacred icons and lamps. Inside the cave there is laso an underground craved tank for the collection of water.On the right of the gallery after 15m, there is a small chamber with an artificial entrance in which there are human bones assumingly of some hermit.

At the end of the cave after 135m , there is a big stone basin that is believed to have been the grave of Saint John the hermit.In the last chamber there are many inscriptions craved on the wallsand the stalactites some of which are very old . Until this day, no excavations have taken place there.In the area surrounding it , on the vertical walls of the gorge there are still saved some primitive hermit cells.