About the area

Meteora is one of Christianity’s holiest places as well as a landscape of outstanding natural beauty. Meteora is a perfect combination of natural and manmade landscape, practically inducing a sense of the transcendent. Visitors come here either to feel the aura of the contemplative seclusion of monastic life and admire a truly unique natural landscape or to marvel at the outstanding architecture of the monasteries.

The first monks took refuge on these cliff tops fleeing an invading Turkish army around the 11th century. Several monasteries were built in the centuries that followed and all the building materials had to be winched up in baskets. Until 1920 this was the sole means for getting supplies up to the monasteries. According to numerous historical sources, there were once thirty religious communities but today only six of them remain and can be visited.

Nature lovers should not miss the opportunity to hike through winding stone paths and gaze at a unique geological phenomenon formed as a result of a chain of erosions and geological changes over a period of 15 million years. In 1988 Meteora was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.