Akrotiriani ("Our lady of the Cape)," a name which apparently is still legally meaningful. Its alternative current name, Moni Toplou, literally means "place of the cannon" , thus called by the Turks for the cannon then mounted over the door. It had that name since at least 1865, when Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt reported on his survey work in Crete, misrepresenting the name as Greek to plou ("the plou," whatever "plou" might be).

The monastery has