Red Monastery

Near Sohag in Upper Egypt, the Red Monastery takes its name from the dark red-brick walls that enclose one of the finest surviving churches of the early Christian world. Founded in the fifth century and linked to the great monastic reformer Shenoute, its fortress-like exterior gives no warning of what waits inside.

The sanctuary has been painstakingly restored to reveal astonishing late-antique frescoes: layered niches of painted saints, geometric borders and glowing ochres, reds and blues, among the best-preserved wall paintings from this era anywhere. Standing in the small, richly decorated apse, you are looking at how Egyptian Christianity actually looked 1,500 years ago, a rare and vivid survival far from the usual pharaonic circuit.