Private Full-Day Tour of Monasteries St Paul and St Antonius

About 240 km north of Hurghada lie some of Egypt’s oldest Christian monasteries, among the holiest places for Egyptian Orthodox Copts. The Monastery of St. Anthony is the oldest Christian monastery in the world. Founded in the 4th century by followers of St. Anthony, the father of monasticism, it still houses more than 100 monks. Its ancient church holds his tomb, with medieval wall paintings and a library of rare manuscripts. Each monastery has a spring of unknown source; the water has flowed for centuries and still supplies the gardens. Above St. Anthony’s, a church and his cave sit on the mountain — 1,420 steps, if you are fit for it. Opposite, about 30 km and a 40-minute drive away, is St. Paul’s Monastery, built over the cave where St. Paul, a 4th-century hermit, lived in prayer. Tradition says ravens brought him bread, and that lions dug his grave after he died at 105. The monastery still shows the monks’ medieval dining table, preserved for centuries.