Cave of the Apocalypse

The most significant stop on our tour of Patmos was the Cave of the Apocalypse where St John received the revelations that he wrote about in the book of Revelation. Given that so many of the sacred sites in Israel were so built over with shrines and basilica, to the point that it was sometimes hard to envisage their original character, I was pleasantly surprised to find that John's cave was still very recognisably a cave. Admittedly, there were not one, but two small chapels in the cave, but they didn't detract from the 'caveness' of the place. (Another welcome feature of Patmos is that it has been lovely to arrive at places and not find 10 other tour buses already there. We must be more off the main tourist track here.)

There was an open theatre adjacent to the cave, where we gathered for a while to read a few excerpts from the book of Revelation, and sing a bit. We decided this would be a good place for a group photo, and Antonia was extraordinarily patient about doing that,with a few different backdrops requested. (Once again, we had been asked not to take photos inside the cave itself, although the area around it was fine. )Read more