Mount Athos is a mountain and peninsula

Peninsula

A peninsula is a piece of land that is bordered by water on three sides but connected to mainland. In many Germanic and Celtic languages and also in Baltic, Slavic and Hungarian, peninsulas are called "half-islands"....

 in Macedonia

Macedonia (Greece)

Macedonia is a geographical and historical region of Greece in Southern Europe. Macedonia is the largest and second most populous Greek region...

, Greece

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

. A World Heritage Site

World Heritage Site

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place that is listed by the UNESCO as of special cultural or physical significance...

, it is home to 20 Eastern Orthodox monasteries and forms a self-governed monastic state within the sovereignty

Sovereignty

Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...

 of the Hellenic Republic

Greece

Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....

. Spiritually, Mount Athos comes under the direct jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople , part of the wider Orthodox Church, is one of the fourteen autocephalous churches within the communion of Orthodox Christianity...

. Today Greeks commonly refer to Mount Athos as the "Holy Mountain" . In Classical times, the peninsula was called Akté (Ακτή) (sometimes Acte or Akte).

The peninsula, the easternmost "leg" of the larger Halkidiki peninsula, protrudes 50 kilometres (31 mi) into the Aegean Sea

Aegean Sea

The Aegean Sea[p] is an elongated embayment of the Mediterranean Sea located between the southern Balkan and Anatolian peninsulas, i.e., between the mainlands of Greece and Turkey. In the north, it is connected to the Marmara Sea and Black Sea by the Dardanelles and Bosporus...

 at a width of between 7 and 12 km (4.3 and 7.5 mi) and covers an area of 335.637 square kilometres (129.59 sq mi).