St. Catherine's sits at the base of Mount Sinai in a high valley of red granite. The monastery was founded by Justinian in the 6th century around a chapel built two hundred years earlier by Helena, mother of Constantine, on the spot where Moses is said to have seen the Burning Bush. A descendant of that bush — botanists call it a rambling rose — still grows in the courtyard.
The monastery is small and the visitor route is limited: the basilica (with its 6th-century mosaic of the Transfiguration, one of the great surviving works of early Byzantine art), the chapel of the Burning Bush, the courtyard well, and the ossuary in the garden, where the skeletons of past monks are stacked. The famous library is not open to the public, but a small museum displays a rotating selection of the monastery's treasures, including illuminated manuscripts and Russian icons. Open Monday to Thursday and Saturday, mornings only; dress conservatively.