Meteora: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Meteora means suspended in the air, and that is what the monasteries are: built from the fourteenth century on the tops of rock pillars three hundred metres high, reached for six hundred years by ladders and by a net hauled up on a rope. There were once twenty-four; six still have monks or nuns. Half a day on the road that links them, and each one closes on a different day — shoulders covered, and women in skirts, which are lent at the door.
A short history of Meteora
In the 11th century monks began living in caves in the huge rock pillars above the Thessalian plain. In the 14th century the monk Athanasios founded the Great Meteoron monastery, and in the following centuries 24 monasteries were built on the cliffs. For centuries they could be reached only by rope ladders or in a net hauled up by a winch. Only in the 1920s were steps cut into the rock. Today six monasteries are active, home to monks and nuns. In 1988 Meteora was declared a World Heritage Site.
The ten best sights in Meteora
1KalambakaThe town at the foot of the rocks; the hotels and the bus are here
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2Kastraki
The village right under the pillars, quieter than town and closer to the paths
3Great MeteoronThe oldest and highest monastery; closed Tuesdays, and skirts are lent at the door
4VarlaamThe rope and windlass that hauled everything up are still in the tower
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5Roussanou
A convent filling the whole top of its rock, reached by a bridge
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6St Nicholas Anapafsas
Small, the first one on the road, with frescoes by Theophanes the Cretan
7Holy TrinityThe hardest climb, and the one from the James Bond film
8St StephenThe only one with no steps — a bridge from the road; the sunset point is beside it
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9Ypapanti
A monastery built inside a cave in the rock face
10Agios Georgios MandilasA chapel in a hole in the cliff, hung with headscarves every April
Scan with your phone camera to open the map there
What is an audio walk?
Tours in Meteora →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Meteora:
Free walking tours in Meteora
Suspended in the air
Meteora means suspended in the air, and that is what the monasteries are: built from the fourteenth century on the tops of rock pillars three hundred metres high, reached for six hundred years by ladders and by a net hauled up on a rope. There were once twenty-four; six still have monks or nuns. Half a day on the road that links them, and each one closes on a different day — shoulders covered, and women in skirts, which are lent at the door.
- St Nicholas Anapafsas · The rock top here is so small that the monastery is built upward in three floors instead of outward. The chapel was painted in 1527 by Theophanes the Cretan, one of the great icon painters of the post-Byzantine world, and it is the first monastery you reach on the road.
- Great Meteoron · A monk named Athanasios came up this rock in the fourteenth century and founded the first monastery on the pillars; he named the rock Meteoron, and the whole place took its name from it. Until the 1920s, visitors were hauled up in a net on a rope — and the monks’ answer to the question of when the rope was replaced was: when it breaks.
- Varlaam · The windlass tower still stands, with the rope and net that brought up food, building stone and people. Two brothers from Ioannina rebuilt this monastery in the sixteenth century, and the timber and stone for it took twenty-two years to haul up — the chapel itself was built in twenty days.
- Roussanou · The building fills the whole top of its rock to the edge, so the walls are simply the cliff continued upward. It is a convent, and the nuns keep it; the bridges you cross to reach it replaced a rope ladder only in the twentieth century.
- Holy Trinity · The most isolated of the six, reached by a path down into a gully and a long stair cut into the rock. In 1981 it was the fortress at the end of the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, and the climb up its cliff is the film’s last big scene.
- St Stephen · The one monastery with no climb — a short bridge from the road crosses to its rock. It was damaged in the Second World War, when the Germans shelled it believing it sheltered resistance fighters, and the nuns rebuilt it. The lookout beside it is where the town watches the sunset over the pillars.
The hermits before the monasteries
Before anyone built on top of the rocks, hermits lived in their sides: holes and ledges in the cliffs, reached by ladders and ropes, some of them still visible with wooden floors in them. This route walks the old paths between Kastraki and the cliff faces. Two to three hours on foot, some steep sections, and good shoes — the paths are the ones the monks used.
- Kastraki · The village sits so close under the pillars that some houses have the rock as a back wall. Since the 1970s it has also been a climbing village — German climbers opened the first routes on the rock faces, and the monks were not consulted.
- Agios Georgios Mandilas · A small chapel in a hole high in the cliff face. Every year on St George’s day in April, young men of Kastraki climb up to it with ropes and hang new headscarves — the mandilia of its name — and the faded scarves of the year before come down.
- Pyxari · The rock above the village is honeycombed with hermit cells. The first hermits came in the eleventh century and lived alone in these holes, gathering only on Sundays for a service. The monasteries on the tops grew out of their community.
- Ypapanti · A monastery built not on a rock but inside one: a cave in the cliff face walled across, with the church behind the wall. It is the least visited of all, at the far end of the road, and it shows what the hermits’ caves looked like once someone had time to build.
- Great Meteoron · The path from Kastraki climbs to the old entrance of the first monastery, and you arrive the way the monks did — on foot, from below. The rocks are not stone that eroded but a river delta: sand and gravel laid down millions of years ago, cemented, lifted and cut apart by water.
- Theopetra Cave · A few kilometres south, a cave in the same limestone holds signs of people living in it for more than a hundred thousand years. Across its entrance is a stone wall dated to about twenty-three thousand years ago, which makes it one of the oldest structures known to have been built by human hands.
Trikala and the mountains behind
Twenty minutes down the plain is Trikala, a town most visitors to Meteora drive straight through, and behind it the Pindus mountains begin at a gorge with a stone bridge across it. This route goes from a Byzantine castle and an Ottoman mosque to a medieval church and fir forest. A full day and a car.
- Asklepieion of Trikki · Strabo calls the sanctuary of Asclepius at ancient Trikke the oldest and most famous of all, and the tradition here is that the god of healing was born in this town. What is left is a fenced patch of foundations in the middle of modern Trikala, which is exactly why nobody stops.
- Trikala Fortress · A Byzantine castle on the hill over the town, with an Ottoman clock tower beside it. Below it is the quarter where Vassilis Tsitsanis was born in 1915 — the composer who did more than anyone to bring rebetiko, the blues of the Greek underworld, into every Greek home.
- Koursoum Mosque · Built in the sixteenth century under a dome covered in lead — kurşun in Turkish, which gives it its name. It is attributed to Sinan, the architect of the great mosques of Istanbul, and it is one of the few Ottoman mosques in Greece that still has its dome and its form intact.
- Porta Panagia · The name means the Virgin of the Gate, because the church stands where the plain enters the mountains. It was built in 1283, and inside are two large icons made not in paint but in mosaic — Christ and the Virgin facing each other across the church.
- Pyli Bridge · A single stone arch thrown across the gorge in 1514 by the monk Vissarion, so that the monastery he founded in the mountains could be reached in winter. It has carried mule traffic for five hundred years and survived every flood of the river below.
- Elati · A village in fir forest at about nine hundred metres, and in August it is ten degrees cooler than the plain. The Greeks of Thessaly come up here in summer for the air and in winter for the snow; foreigners almost never do.
Getting to Meteora and getting around
- Kalambaka Station · The train from Athens, about five hours with one change; the rocks appear before you arrive
- Bus Station · Buses to Trikala, Ioannina and Thessaloniki; and the morning bus up to the monasteries
- Trikala · The regional town, twenty minutes away, and the buses to the mountains leave from it
Cheap eats in Meteora
Thessaly eats like the mountain it backs onto: grilled meat, pies with wild greens, and in autumn mushrooms from the Pindus forests — the region is serious enough about them to have a museum. Over the pass at Metsovo they smoke a cheese called metsovone and grow wine at a thousand metres. The counter food is souvlaki and a pita pie, a few euro, and in Trikala the evening is tsipouro with small plates that come free with each round.
- Trikala · Tsipouro by the small bottle; the food comes with it
- Metsovo · Smoked cheese by the piece, and mountain wine
- Kalambaka · Souvlaki and pies on the main street, a few euro
- Kastraki · Village tavernas with the rocks behind the tables
- Natural History Museum · The mushroom floor; then order them in town
- Elati · Mountain pies and grilled meat in the fir forest
Museums in Meteora
The monasteries are the museums here — frescoes, icons, libraries of manuscripts, and the machinery that lifted it all up the rock. Each one closes on a different day of the week, so check before you set out, and dress for a church.
- Great Meteoron · The old kitchen, the cellar, and the founder’s cell
- Varlaam · The windlass tower and the water barrel
- St Nicholas Anapafsas · Frescoes by Theophanes the Cretan, 1527
- Theopetra Cave · Check the opening days before driving out
- Natural History Museum · Animals of the Pindus and a floor of mushrooms
- Porta Panagia · Two mosaic icons from the thirteenth century
Nature and day trips near Meteora
The pillars are the remains of a river delta: sand and gravel laid down in a sea millions of years ago, cemented into rock, lifted, and cut apart by water and frost. Behind them the Pindus rises into fir forest, and the river that did the cutting still runs along the foot of them.
- Pyxari · The trail to the hermit caves; good shoes
- St Stephen · The sunset lookout; come early to stand at the rail
- Pineios River · Plane trees and shade along the water
- Pyli Bridge · A stone arch over the gorge where the mountains start
- Elati · Fir forest, ten degrees cooler than the plain
- Pertouli · High meadows, horses, and snow in winter
Things to do in Meteora with kids
Rocks the size of towers and a monastery from a James Bond film are an easy sell to children. The trouble is the steps — some monasteries have hundreds — so pick the ones with bridges, and keep the hikes short.
- St Stephen · No climb at all; a bridge from the road
- Varlaam · The rope and net that hauled people up
- Natural History Museum · Stuffed bears and wolves of the region
- Theopetra Cave · A cave where people lived in the ice age
- Trikala Fortress · Walls, a clock tower and a café with a view
- Pertouli · Horse riding in the meadows
Holy places in Meteora
Meteora is the second most important monastic centre in Greece after Mount Athos, and unlike Athos women may enter. It is a working religious place, not a museum: services go on, the monks and nuns live here, and the dress rule is enforced at every door.
- Roussanou · A convent on the whole top of its rock
- Holy Trinity · The most isolated; a long stair cut in rock
- Ypapanti · A monastery walled into a cave
- Agios Georgios Mandilas · Seen from below; the climb is for the festival
- Koursoum Mosque · A lead-domed Ottoman mosque in Trikala
- Porta Panagia · The Virgin of the Gate, where the mountains begin
Nightlife in Meteora
Kalambaka goes to bed early; people come here to be at the monasteries at nine. The evening is a sunset at the rocks and dinner in Kastraki. For a real night out, Trikala is twenty minutes away and has a student population and a bar street of its own.
- St Stephen lookout · The sunset over the pillars; the whole town is there
- Kastraki · Dinner under the floodlit rocks
- Kalambaka · A few bars on the main square; quiet by midnight
- Trikala · The student town, bars along the river
- Trikala Fortress · A drink on the castle hill over the lights
Frequently asked questions about Meteora
What is there to see in Meteora?
The top sights in Meteora are Kalambaka, Kastraki and Great Meteoron. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Meteora?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Meteora without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Meteora?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Meteora, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: Suspended in the air.
How do you get to Meteora and get around?
The main ways are Kalambaka Station, Bus Station and Trikala. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Meteora, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Meteora that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Meteora for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.