The group of basilian monks that arrived in the hills of Tuscolo in 1004, was led by an old holy monk, Nilus. He was anxious to find a place to build a monastery “to gather all his scattered spiritual sons”. Tradition says that the Blessed Mother of God appeared here to the monks, asking that they build a sanctuary dedicated to Her, from whence graces would flow.
This group of monks of the Byzantine rite was formed in the years between 950-955.
The foundation of the Monastery of Santa Maria of Grottaferrata preceded only by a few months the death of St. Nilus, which happened on the 26th of September, 1004. This monastic foundation came fifty years before the division between the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Church, and for these historical reasons it is not an uniate community. Since its beginning, it was always under the protection and jurisdiction of the Holy Roman Church and the Patriarch of Rome.

This Byzantine Monastery witnesses with its continuing prayers, maintained for more than a thousand years, the unity of the Church in its several traditions of spirituality and culture.

With many Orthodox Churches and monasteries, we Basilian Monks – spiritual sons of St. Nilus – have fraternal and friendly relationships and reciprocal esteem. We join with them in the conscious and compelling service of the ecumenical dialogue. For our part, we cultivate it with the multiple personal and of community encounters, with generous and open hospitality to the orthodox brethren that visit us, often remaining as guests for varied times, and above all with prayer, humility, insistent trusting to the maternal hands of the Blessed Mother of God that guides the Christians (Theotòkos Hodigitria), whose ancient icon has for centuries been the symbolic heart and life-blood of our monastery.

This monastery is a place of meeting and dialogue between the latin West and the Orthodox East, open to anyone who desires to live in, to think about and to go deep into the spirituality of Byzantium.