The Red Monastery

On one side of the Red Sea, near the shores of Dahab city in Egypt, you will find a very special spot inside the sea called the “Blue Hole”. This Spot is one of the best diving spots in the whole world, all the experienced divers from all over the world travel to the Blue Hole especially to go through this experience.

Blue Hole is not for beginners, you need to be an extremely advanced diver and have a high level of courage to be able to dive into this special spot. Let us introduce you the most famous diving spots in the world “The Blue Hole” in a few points:

You will read in this article

About the Red Monastery

From the city of Suhag you can reach the Red Monastery after driving for 21 kilometres to the west. During the early history of Christianity, they built lots of Monastery but the Red Monastery was one of the important ones and it’s standing still until today.

While reading the blog’s headline, you definitely wonder why it’s called the Red Monastery. The reason behind the name is using many red bricks in the construction of the Monastery. Beside the red bricks they used some white limestone and other pink and black granite columns but the red used more.

Saint Bishoy was the one who started the construction of the Red Monastery at the beginning of the 4th century. This great Monastery faced a catastrophic fire a couple of times, once during the Roman Period and the other was because of Berber attacks.

After the fire ate a lot from the monastery, the remaining parts was its church and some of the surrounding fortification walls located in the south. In the north, there are some remaining that we believe it belongs to an industrial area

What is inside the Red Monastery

The Red Monastery from inside will amaze you. You will find there the main church which consists of three wings in a long rectangular space, the middle wing is the largest one of the three wings. To the south-west corner of the main church there is the The Virgin Mary church attached to it. At the end of the eastern side of the church there are amazing and colorful decorations and paintings for many scenes of the holy Biblica.

The fort of the monastery is located at the south section of the church, this fort dates back to the reign of Empress Helena.

The fort is very important to all the monks there as it contains all the features that allow them to stay for a long time. The fort has a church, cells, a storage room, and a water source. So the fort was built in a square shape with four floors, the ground and first floor was made of baked bricks but the top two floors were made of sun-dried mud brick. This is what makes the Red Monastery so special.

The Monastery restauration

In the year 2003, the U.S Agency for International Development decided to start supporting this Coptic Orthodox monastery with the help of the American Research Center in Egypt. Through the 1400 year of the central basilica, it was ruined all this time and the agency tried so hard to keep it alive despite the mysterious site and condition of the monastery.

Each part of the monastery has a chance to get restored in the perfect way and solve all the previous faulty restoration. They played a great role to save the monastery walls and floors that were damaged because of termite and birds or any weather fluctuations.

Beside the architectural rescuing part, there is a very important mission to rescue the artwork at his historical monastery as it contains many paintings and pictures that date back to a very long time. This legacy has to be preserved as much as possible to not waste such a fascinating piece of art.

If you decide to spend your next vacation on a journey full of mystery, Egypt will be your perfect destination and the Red Monastery is one of the most important sites in Egypt. Don’t miss the beauty of such a historical monastery full of amazing antiquities you will definitely love to discover.

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