On the top of a steep highland that dominates the valley of the river Afrin there are the imposing vestiges of the paleochristian complex erected in memory of the place in which St. Simon lived.

Born in a village near Antioch in the 386 A.D., St. Simon reached in 412 the monastery situated in the vicinity. Strongly attracted by the asceticism, asked and got to be able to be withdrawn in total isolation on the top of the highland in a little box set on a column whose height was up to 15 meters. The fame of the hermit attracted pilgrims coming the whole Christian East, and to his death, happened in 459, the emperor Zenone ordered that around the column on which he had lived was erected a church worthy of his memory.

The Stilits were solitary monks of the ancient Christian East, present particularly in Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt. The Stilits (from the Greek stylos, " column "), that conducted a life of prayer and penitence sat on a base set on top of a column, where they remained for many years, often up to the death. Inaugurated in the V century by St. Simon, past to the history as the " stilita " for excellence, this extreme form of asceticism lift perplexity also in the the Christian monachism, probably for its character of plebeian ostentation. Nevertheless, the fame of holiness of who was spending in prayer the whole night, spread all over the Christian world quickly, provoking the flow of pilgrims near the columns on which the people lived and, in some cases, the installation of monastic community in the surrounding spaces. The Stilits became well soon also listened to advisers of the emperors and they abandoned this kind of life definitely only after the X century. 

Nartece	Column	Column
Column	Column	Details
Particolari	Apse	Apse
External Courtyard	Loggia	Panorama