A Hidden Treasure: Rediscovered Images of Greece’s Medieval Monastic Communities

The monastic communities at Mount Athos and Meteora are well-known for their antiquity and their breathtaking locations atop craggy mountains in different regions of Greece. But a new photography exhibition at the Maliotis Cultural Center (Hellenic College Holy Cross, Brookline, MA) brings a remarkable new perspective to these sites of living tradition, thanks to film and images from a long-forgotten journey to Greece in the fall of 1929.

“Mount Athos & Meteora 1929: Princeton’s Hidden Treasure” draws on archival materials from the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University, including content from a newly discovered 33-minute film about an unofficial expedition to Mount Athos and Meteora, and the accompanying 254 photographic prints and 81 lantern slides that detail one of the most “mysterious, unique, and unaltered” corners of the world. 

Mount Athos—a peninsula in Greece that preserves one of the oldest and still active monastic communities in the world—has sustained monastic life in twenty main compounds, some with a history dating to the tenth century. In addition, the Protaton serves as the major church in Karyes—the seat of clerical and secular administration on the Holy Mountain, as the region is also known. The monasteries on Mount Athos, all populated by monks (as no woman is allowed near the holy peninsula), have promoted Byzantine or Eastern Christian spirituality and artistic practices since the Middle Ages. 

The Athonite monasteries have also long benefited from the support of Christian leaders who acknowledged the spiritual value of these communities. The Byzantine emperors had been notable patrons, especially during the Palaiologan dynasty (1260–1453), as were rulers from neighboring regions, including Georgia, Serbia, Bulgaria, and the Romanian principalities around the Carpathian Mountains. The typikon of Dionysiou Monastery, supported by Emperor Alexios III of Trebizond (r. 1349–90) in 1374, explicitly states, “All emperors, kings, or rulers of some fame have built monasteries on Mount Athos for their eternal memory.”

This ongoing interest in and patronage of Mount Athos ensured the continuation of the monasteries and had collateral effects of contributing to the promotion of significant forms of Byzantine spirituality and artistic practices in regions far beyond the Holy Mountain. The exchange of objects, such as manuscripts and liturgical embroideries produced in local workshops and scriptoria, as well as the movements of people, such as monks and artists, facilitated cultural contact and the transfer of ideas between Mount Athos and far-off lands. This has continued through the centuries and into the modern era, as the 1929 expedition also confirms.  

Greece is home to other noteworthy monastic sites with a long history and spiritual significance. One in particular—viewed second in importance to Mount Athos—is the Meteora. Beginning in the fourteenth century, twenty-four monasteries were raised atop giant hill-like rocks in the region of northwestern Greece. Six remain open to this day. Unlike the communities on Mount Athos, Meteora is home to monks and nuns. 

The exhibition at the Maliotis Center—a curatorial collaboration between Princeton University, the Mount Athos Center, and the Mount Athos Foundation of America—details various aspects of monastic life on Mount Athos and Meteora in the early twentieth century, ranging from general views of the monasteries and the surrounding areas, to the monks who performed various daily duties in the local crafts and trades, including harvesting crops and activities in shoemaking and painting workshops.  

The three-month expedition to Mount Athos and Meteora in 1929 (late August to early December) was intended to document “a fantastic place because it was unlike any place in the world. No women had lived on this peninsula for 700 years, and they didn’t even allow female animals,” as one of the expedition participants, Floyd Crosby (1899–1985), noted in 1973 in an archival source. Crosby was a photographer and became a pioneer of cinematography, winning an Academy Award for Best Cinematography in 1931 for Tabu: A Story of the South Seas, his debut film, and having more than 128 film and television credits in his name upon his death. On this expedition, he was accompanied by the Russian émigré and painter Vladimir “Vovo” Perfilieff (1895–1943) and the Princeton alumnus and architect Gordon McCormick (1894–1967). Once arrived in Greece, Anastasios Chatzimitsos (1907–2004) joined the team as an interpreter. 

This expedition project—titled “No Woman’s Land”—was not sponsored by Princeton University, hence its “unofficial” nature, but the archival material ended up in the university’s collection. It is possible that it may have been a self-funded project by one or several of the team members. Nevertheless, those involved were interested in recording the daily life and architecture of these holy places and important pilgrimage sites through photography and film. The original footage of the expedition is particularly noteworthy. Discovered at Princeton in the Department of Art & Archaeology in late 2017 in nine canisters contained within an unassuming barrel, the short film details various activities at the monasteries, the natural settings, and the experiences of a certain hermit. Later identified as Father Ilya (Elias), this figure spent 30 years living a very modest life in a cave in seclusion. By including details about this humble figure, the film parallels the documented communal life in the monasteries and individual spiritual pursuits.

To date, the footage of this film has been screened in various contexts, including during the symposium “Eclecticism at the Edges: Medieval Art and Architecture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Cultural Spheres,” held at Princeton University on April 5-6, 2019; at the opening of the exhibition “Mount Athos: The Ark of Orthodoxy,” organized at the Maliotis Cultural Center on September 13, 2022; and, most recently, at the opening of “Mount Athos & Meteora 1929: Princeton’s Hidden Treasure” on September 27, 2024.

The exhibition at the Maliotis Cultural Center is one of a series on the topic. The material has also been on display in McCormick Hall at Princeton in 2019, and at the Mount Athos Center in Thessaloniki between May 25 and September 16, 2023. The exhibition will continue to travel with other possible destinations being Romania, and other cities in Greece and the United States.

Finally, these archival items sit at the foundation of a new research project—“Connecting Histories: The Princeton and Mount Athos Legacy”—which focuses on organizing, digitizing, and contextualizing the archival material related to Mount Athos and housed at Princeton University, making it available to everyone for research and study. An international collaboration between faculty, staff, and students, the project “aims to explore and bring awareness to the rich, complex, and remarkable historical and cultural heritage of Mount Athos in Greece, and its connection to Princeton.” As part of this project, the film and photographic collections of the 1929 expedition will be digitized and made available online, and a public Symposium will be held in 2026.

Physically accessible only to few, the rich legacies of Mount Athos, Meteora, and other such remote monastic sites are now widely available to all through the archival record and the research, study, and exhibition opportunities it offers.