SAINT JOHN CAVE OR KATHOLIKO CAVE

The Cave of Saint John the Hermit, or Katholiko Cave, is also located in the Avlaki Gorge at Akrotiri. It’s only a few hundred meters away from “Arkoudospilios” (The Bear Cave). It is next to the abandoned Katholiko Monastery, near Gouvernetou Monastery. In the same manner as Arkoudospilios, this cave also used to be the basin of a river that dried up. Its full length is 135m and it has many impressive stalagmites and stalactites.

At the beginning and at the end of the cave you can find sacred icons and lamps, like the ones in a chapel. Inside the cave there is an underground carved tank for the collection of water. On the right of the main path of the cave, after about 15m, there is a small chamber where there are human bones, which most possibly belonged to a hermit that lived here in the past. At the end of Katholiko Cave there is a big stone basin that most possibly was the grave of Saint John the Hermit. In the last chamber of the cave there are many inscriptions carved on the walls and the stalactites, some of them being very old. To this day, no excavations have taken place in the cave. In the surrounding area, on the vertical walls of the gorge, you can still find some very old hermit cells.