On October 16, 2020, and for nine days, the digital interactive exhibition “Passage to the Light” opens its gates to the public, which will be hosted at the Athens Concert Hall and will present digitized treasures from Holy Monasteries of Mount Athos for the first time in the millennial history of Mount Athos.
Now accessible with the help of modern digital technology, these sacred treasures testify to the Orthodox cultural tradition as reflected for centuries on Mount Athos, highlighting at the same time the message and the importance of the spirituality of the Athonite State for the modern world. At the same time, the exhibition “Passage to the Light” gives visitors the opportunity to get to know the daily life of the fathers of Mount Athos.
The public will get to know for the first time with the unique work of digitization of the relics of the Holy Monasteries of Mount Athos “Athos Digital Heritage.” Initiated and created by the Holy Community of Mount Athos, the “Athonite Digital Heritage” brings to light thousands of digitized relics and objects of high cultural value, aiming to share the Orthodox Christian culture with the International Community.
The unique work of the Athos Digital Heritage, carried out during four years with the co-financing of the European Union (NSRF 2014 – 2020), includes in digitized form handwritten codes, incunabula, documents, exceptional works of art, objects of special collections, 3D monument models such as the Protaton Church and the Altar of Vatopedi Monastery, digital presentations of Holy Monasteries, special digital applications of educational and psycho-beneficial content. The “moodle” e-learning platform was also used to create digital educational content.
The Athos Digital Heritage is a spiritual antidote of Mount Athos to the needs of society, and especially to young people, who have new channels and ways of communication through the digital world. The vast wealth of cultural heritage is now preserved in an extensive repository of thousands of digitized objects, which the public can browse through the website https://mountathos.org/.
Through interactive screens, holograms, virtual reality presentations, 3D projections and digital tours, some of these digitized relics “come to life,” giving visitors to the visitors of the “Passage to the Light” exhibition the opportunity to experience the long history and everyday life of the Athonite State.
Elder Ieronymos Simonopetritis, representative of the Holy Community and head of the Athos Digital Heritage project said: “The work of the Athos Digital Heritage presented through the “Passage to the Light” exhibition is the legacy of the Holy Community of Mount Athos, which is opened to the world by technological means. We invite all the people, especially the young people, to embrace this work, hoping that it will help them get to know the historical and the living spiritual and cultural tradition of Mount Athos.”
The Athos Digital Heritage is an innovative initiative of the Holy Community of Mount Athos, and it is a project related to the formation of an integrated digital ark of knowledge and culture, which includes in digital form the cultural repository of the Holy Monasteries of Mount Athos.
The Athos Digital Heritage has now become digitally available to the entire international community via the internet, offering the opportunity to browse the relics of the Monasteries of the Athos peninsula in a way that fully respects the spiritual and hesychastic character of Mount Athos.
The visitors can discover the unique collection of digitized treasures of Mount Athos and the huge wealth of digital content in the Athos Digital Heritage with one visit:
● on the website: https://mountathos.org/
● on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AthosDigitalHeritage/
● on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/athosdigitalheritage/
