Meteora

Sandstone towers rising four hundred metres straight out of the Thessalian plain, with monasteries balanced on top of them. There is nothing else like it in Europe, and photographs genuinely do not prepare you.

Tour highlights

• The Great Meteoron (Transfiguration) monastery
• Varlaam monastery
• Roussanou, St. Stephen, Holy Trinity and St. Nicholas Anapafsas
• The rock pillars and the sunset viewpoints
• Byzantine frescoes and monastic treasuries
• The old winch towers and rope nets
• Kalambaka and Kastraki villages
• The Byzantine church of the Dormition in Kalambaka

About this journey

The rock is about sixty million years old — river sediment compressed into conglomerate and sandstone, then lifted and weathered into isolated pillars, some over four hundred metres high. Hermits were living in the caves by the 11th century. Between the 14th and 16th centuries, as the Byzantine world came apart around them, monks built twenty-four monasteries on the summits.

For centuries the only way up was a rope net, a basket and a hand winch. Travellers asked how often the ropes were replaced; the standard answer was “when they break”. Steps were cut into the rock in the 1920s, which is why you can walk into them today.

Six monasteries remain active and open to visitors: the Great Meteoron — the largest and oldest, founded around 1344 by Athanasios, a monk from Mount Athos, and sitting at 613 metres — plus Varlaam, Roussanou, St. Stephen, Holy Trinity and St. Nicholas Anapafsas. Each has its own character; a comfortable day covers two or three properly rather than all six in a rush.

Meteora was inscribed by UNESCO in 1988 under both cultural and natural criteria — a rare combination that says everything about the place. The frescoes inside, especially at St. Nicholas Anapafsas by the Cretan painter Theophanes Strelitzas, are among the finest post-Byzantine painting anywhere.

The drive is roughly four and a half hours each way, which is why we also run this as a two-day trip: you arrive in the afternoon light, sleep in Kalambaka, and have the monasteries to yourself in the early morning before the coaches arrive.

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