The Monastery of Archangel Michael Tharri

Information

The Monaster is located in the inland of the island, after the village of Laermi. On the 5th century AD, the Early Christian church was built on the ruins of an old temple. The present church, which is dedicated to Archangel Michael, dates between the 9th and 11th century AD.
According to the folk tradition, a princess suffering from an incurable disease came from Constantinople to Rhodes. Her father sent her to this place, hoping that the ideal climate of the island would help her. One night she saw Archangel Michael in her sleep, and he told her “Have courage, you will be well”. When she managed to get cured, she wanted to build the monastery. To determine the length of the monastery, she threw her ring with all her strength. The people who started looking for it had trouble finding it, and they would say “I think (tharro) it fell this way” and “I think it fell that way”, hence the name of the Monastery, Tharri.
The architecture of the temple includes six phases, and its decoration with icons includes four phases. Only the ledger is preserved from the Byzantine church. The older frescoes with the two whole-body Hierarchs, Saint Eleftherios and Saint Grigorios, date back to the end of the 12th century AD, and are kept in the Byzantine museum of Rhodes.
The most important fresco of the temple extends from the sanctuary to the dome, it is preserved for its largest part, and it is the first one of the 13th century AD. On the top, Pantocrator is depicted, and on the two homocentric circles the angels worshiping the Throne are depicted. On the north and south wall the Niptira and the Last Supper are depicted respectively. Archangel Michael is honored in a massively sized fresco, destroyed in its largest part, while he is framed by Archangels Gabriel and Rafael