The name Galataki, tradition says, points to a master craftsman from Galata, the district of Constantinople across the Golden Horn - though some prefer a humbler etymology tied to milk and cheese. Around the tenth century, the story goes, this man was nearly drowned by a fierce storm off Mount Kandili. He invoked Saint Nicholas, the protector of seafarers; the sea grew calm; he reached land and, in gratitude, built a monastery in the saint's honor. There may be older bones beneath the legend. The monastery is thought to have existed as early as the eighth century, raised on the ruins of a pre-Christian Greek temple to Poseidon - god of the same sea that the founder's story turns from threat to salvation.

Few buildings absorb as much history as a monastery on a contested coast. When the Crusaders and Venetians seized Euboea in 1204, the monastery was sacked by the forces of Boniface of Montferrat. Pirates raided it and arsonists burned it. In 1470 it suffered fresh ruin at the hands of Ottoman conquerors, and for centuries afterward it lived under their authority until a Turkish firman of 1838 finally eased its troubles. Through all of it the community held on. After Greek independence, a European company worked a deposit of leucolith - a white mineral - on the monastery's land, giving it a rare burst of prosperity, and from 1950 the monastery took on a tender new role, serving for a time as an orphanage.

The heart of the monastery is its ancient church, preserved in remarkable condition with the three classic divisions of Orthodox architecture: the narthex at the entrance, the main church or katholikon, and the sanctuary, the Holy Vima. Built in the Byzantine manner and rebuilt in 1557, it is famous above all for its frescoes, completed in 1567. They came courtesy of a benefactor named Francis Fragomustakis - who, the records note with a certain symmetry, had himself been saved from a severe storm at sea. The massive, heavy narthex was added later, in the seventeenth century. Beside a chapel dedicated to John the Forerunner, a crypt descends eighteen steps into the rock, and the monastery guards relics of a long roll of saints, from Andrew and Nicholas to Mary Magdalene and John Chrysostom.

For most of its history this was a men's monastery, and for much of that time the oldest on the island. In 1946 it passed to a community of women, and in 1958 the Greek state recognized what its long survival had earned, designating it a protected ancient monument. The surrounding settlement enters the official record after the Greek revolution of 1821, annexed in 1835 to the municipality of Aegaion and today part of the community of Limni within the wider municipality of Mantoudi-Limni-Agia Anna. By the 2011 census the monastery was home to six nuns - a small community keeping watch over a very old place.

Stand on the monastery grounds and the geography explains the legend. The North Euboean Gulf stretches out below, narrow enough to feel intimate yet open enough to turn dangerous when the wind rises off Mount Kandili. Nine kilometers northwest lies the town of Limni; Chalcis, the island's gateway, sits 67 kilometers to the southeast. For a thousand years sailors, pilgrims, and refugees have looked up at this white church above the water and, if the stories are any guide, more than a few have whispered the same prayer to Saint Nicholas that the founder once did.