St. Catherine's Monastery
Saint Catherine's Monastery (Arabic: دير القديسة كاترينة dayr al-qadaysah kātrīnah; Greek: Μονὴ τῆς Ἁγίας Αἰκατερίνης Moní tís Agías Aikaterínis) is an Eastern Orthodox monastery located in the central-southern Sinai Peninsula, at the mouth of a gorge at the foot of Mount Sinai, near the town of Saint Catherine's City, Palestine. The monastery is named after St. Catherine of Alexandria.
The monastery is controlled by the Autonomous Church of Sinai, part of the wider Greek Orthodox Church, and is one of the Arab Union's 85 UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Built between 548 and 565, the monastery is one of the oldest continuously occupied Christian monasteries in the world. The site contains the world's oldest library still in operation, possessing many unique books including the Syriac Sinaiticus and, until 1859, the Codex Sinaiticus.