Kykkos Monastery: History, Legends & Visitor Tips

A hermit who wouldn’t give directions. A governor who struck him for it. An emperor’s dream, a sick daughter, and an icon nobody is allowed to look at. Kykkos Monastery didn’t get to be Cyprus’s richest religious site by being ordinary.

The Hermit Who Started It All

The story begins around the end of the 11th century, with a hermit named Esaias living alone in a cave on Mount Kykkos, deep in the Troodos range. One day, Manuel Boutoumites, the Byzantine governor of Cyprus, got lost in the forest while out hunting. He stumbled across Esaias and asked for directions — the hermit, bound by his ascetic vows, refused to answer. Boutoumites, furious, struck him.

It’s the kind of story that should end there, a minor cruelty forgotten by history. Instead, it became the origin myth of one of Orthodoxy’s most important monasteries.

An Illness, a Dream, and an Icon From Constantinople

Shortly after returning to Nicosia, Boutoumites fell seriously ill. Remembering how he’d treated the hermit, he sought out Esaias and begged forgiveness. Esaias forgave him — but told him healing would only come through a specific, near-impossible favor: securing the famous icon of the Virgin Mary from the imperial palace in Constantinople, an icon tradition holds was painted by the Apostle Luke himself, while the Virgin was still alive.

Boutoumites recovered and, true to his word, traveled to Constantinople to make the request to Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. The emperor refused — the icon wasn’t his to give away. But fate, as these stories go, had other plans. The emperor’s own daughter fell gravely ill with the same illness that had struck Boutoumites, and nothing cured her. In his desperation, Esaias appeared to the emperor in a dream, revealing that only sending the icon to Cyprus would save her. Alexios agreed. His daughter recovered. And rather than part with the original, he commissioned an exact copy to send in its place — the Virgin Mary herself is said to have appeared to him that same night, confirming this was her wish all along.

According to legend, as the icon was carried in procession from the coast up into the Troodos Mountains, the trees along the route bowed their branches in welcome.

The Bird That Named the Mountain

A second, older legend explains the name itself. Long before the monastery existed, locals told of a bird with a human voice that flew over the forest, singing a strange little verse:

“Kykkou, Kykkou, Kykkos’ hill / A monastery the site shall fill / A golden girl shall enter in / And never shall come out again.”

The “golden girl,” most agree, is the icon itself — arriving at Kykkos and never leaving. Whether the mountain gave the monastery its name or the prophecy gave the mountain its purpose depends on which version you’re told, and locals seem happy to let both stand.

The Icon No One Is Allowed to See

Here’s the detail that tends to surprise first-time visitors most: the icon of the Panagia tou Kykkou, the entire reason this monastery exists, is permanently covered in an ornate silver-gilt case. Its face has not been publicly shown in centuries. Tradition holds that anyone who looks upon it directly will be blinded — so what visitors see today is a covered relic, venerated but unseen, which somehow makes the whole place feel more mysterious rather than less.

Because the monastery was founded by imperial decree and funded directly by Alexios Komnenos, it was granted “stavropegic” status — meaning it answers to no local bishop, only to the Ecumenical Patriarchate directly. A fragment of the True Cross is said to have been placed beneath its foundation stone. It remains, by most measures, the wealthiest and most influential monastery on the island.

A President’s Monastery

Kykkos has one more claim that has nothing to do with the 11th century: this is where Archbishop Makarios III, who would go on to become Cyprus’s first president after independence, began his religious life as a young monk in 1926. He returned throughout his life and, after his death in 1977, was buried not inside the monastery itself but on a nearby hilltop, 3km to the west — a site now known as the Throni viewpoint, and a stop in its own right for the views over the Troodos range alone.

Visiting Kykkos Today

The building you’ll actually walk through dates from 1831 — the original 11th-century structure burned down more than once over the centuries, as most wooden monastery buildings eventually do. What survived is genuinely striking: gold-mosaic corridors depicting biblical scenes, an ornate entrance archway, and a small museum on-site housing manuscripts, vestments, and religious artifacts collected over nine centuries.

A few practical notes: dress conservatively (shoulders and knees covered — shawls are provided if you arrive without), and go earlier in the day if you can, since tour buses fill the courtyard from late morning onward.

Whatever brings you up into these mountains — the icon, the legend, or simply the pine-scented air at 1,300 metres — Kykkos has a way of staying with you long after you’ve come back down. Our Troodos, Omodos & Kykkos Monastery tour takes you there from Paphos, along with the Throni viewpoint and the wine village of Omodos — we’d be glad to take you along.