Iona Abbey

Columba and twelve companions founded a monastery on Iona in 563, and the island became a center of learning and mission whose influence spread through Scotland and northern England; kings were buried here in the burial ground traditionally called Reilig Odhrain. The medieval abbey that stands today is largely the legacy of the fifteenth-century Lords of the Isles, and after the Reformation it fell to ruin.

In 1938 Rev. George MacLeod founded the Iona Community and rebuilt the ruined abbey with trainee ministers and unemployed Glasgow workers living and working together, a project the community describes as rebuilding lives as much as stones. The community's spaces reopened in 2021 after extensive renovation, its Wild Goose worship resources shaped hymnody far beyond Scotland, and pilgrimage to the island remains active, reached by a five-minute passenger ferry from Fionnphort on Mull. Iona is at once a scheduled monument, a functioning church, a residential ecumenical community, and one of Britain's most significant pilgrimage destinations.

Visiting

Historic Environment Scotland runs the abbey: adult GBP 10 online, summer daily 9:30am to 5:30pm (Sunday from 12:30), winter 10am to 4pm closed Sundays; the Iona Community publishes worship times.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Iona_Abbey_-_general_view_from_SW.jpg), CC BY-SA 4.0, Tom Parnell.