St. Catherine's Monastery

At 1,570 metres in the Sinai mountains, the Monastery of Saint Catherine is the oldest continuously operating monastery in the world. It has been walled in since the 6th century, when the Emperor Justinian built the fortress walls that still stand.

Inside the enclosure there are around 3,000 square metres of Byzantine and later churches, and a library that holds around 4,000 manuscripts, including fragments of the Book of Deuteronomy and the Gospels in Greek, and the Sinai Arabic text of the Pentateuch, one of the oldest surviving Arabic manuscripts anywhere.

Getting there

From Dahab, the road over the Sinai mountains to St. Catherine takes about three hours and climbs to 1,600 metres before dropping to the monastery in the valley. The road was cut by the British in the 1860s as a military route to Sharm el-Sheikh, and it is still paved, still fast, and still one of the great drives in the region.

The rules

The monastery is still a working place of worship. Dress modestly — no shorts, no sleeveless tops for men — and do not photograph inside the churches or the library. Photography of the exterior is fine.

Combine it with the mountain

The Sinai is a serious hiking destination in its own right: the summit of Mount Catherine at 2,642 metres is a straightforward two-hour walk from the monastery with a guide, and the view over the whole peninsula on a clear morning is one of the great ones in Egypt.