From the earliest times the Monastery of the Archangels is almost “rained” on by the waves of the Mediterranean and is built at the foot of the Andromedus knoll. The Monastery due to its location at the main port of Palestine in the city of Joppa (Jaffa) offered hospitality to all the pious pilgrims who were arriving in the thousands every year, from all the Orthodox countries, Greece, Cyprus, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania and a lot more from Russia. Facing this perpetual event, the Monastery of the Archangels, to meet its mission of hospitality and to facilitate the pilgrims, was repaired and beautified by the Patriarch of Jerusalem Kyrill 2nd in 1852.

All the pilgrims, who by necessity had to arrive through this port, would stay at this monastery where they first presented themselves to the Abbot of the Monastery, who was considered the first Abbot of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem due to the large flock that was in Jaffa but also due to his great mission to be first in receiving the pious pilgrims from throughout the world and who were arriving with piety and faith to venerate the God trodden places of our Lord Jesus Christ. Having rested at the Monastery after a tiring sea journey, they would then form teams of pilgrims and depart together accompanied by the Cabasides to perform the Holy Migration on foot for a whole six months. Having completed the Holy Migration they would again return to the Monastery to get back on their return journey on the first ship that was at the port of Jaffa in front of the Monastery, returning to their countries having been sanctified by the shrines of Orthodoxy in Palestine, such as the Tomb of Christ, the terrible Golgotha, the cave of the Nativity etc.

Apart from the hospitality aspects that the Monastery had assumed towards the Orthodox from the whole world, it served in parallel another important role. It was the spiritual centre of the large Orthodox community of that time, which numbered around 35,000 Orthodox Christians. Suddenly however, with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 it fell into inactivity. The great majority of this Orthodox flock due to the wars that followed, were forced to migrate while the port of Jaffa, after a three thousand year operation, entered a period of disuse and closed down after another new port, more important opened, the port of Haifa and the international airport of Tel-Aviv. Moreover, the magnificent Church of the Monastery of the Archangels which was, as it was reported, of untold beauty, in the eve of Christmas of 1961 through unknown reasons, caught fire and was totally destroyed. After this determining event the Monastery was progressively deserted and the building structures reached a terrible state of disrepair, externally giving the picture of a ruined building complex. Even so, only the abbot remained in it, performing the duties of an officiating priest in the Orthodox Community Church of Saint George in Joppa. The Monastery remained in this state until 1994 when a new effort was made to restore it by the present abbot of the Monastery, Archimandrite Damascene, a faithful observer of the tradition of the Hagiotaphite Fathers, who many times built with their sweat and toil the most holy Shrines. God so arranged things, that father Damascene was able to obtain the necessary sum of 500,000 dollars, which came from the inheritance of his adoptive mother, Mrs Matina Dariba, from Kifisia in Attica. Suffice to say that the Church of the Archangels were built within a period of six months. Of course after the restoration of the Church, the restoration attention was directed to the remaining areas of the Monastery (cells, the synodic, the hospice, the Hall of Justice of the Orthodox community, beautification etc).