Getting closer to God in Greece's epic, mountain-top monasteries

Telegraph

04-05-2025

After a lengthy drive along traffic-jammed roads from Athens, the first glimpse of Meteora's stone monasteries – each perched atop fingers of sandstone rising steeply from the pancake-flat Thessaly plain – is truly spectacular.
A World Heritage site since the 1980s, you can 'do' these evocative monasteries on an extreme day trip from Athens, involving a four-hour drive either way, and an afternoon spent visiting the main ones. I'd chosen to stay overnight. 'It's the best way, especially if you want to see the monasteries at sunset,' said George, my guide from local company Visit Meteors.
Surrounded by hedgerows filled with crab apple blossom and the corduroy of fresh-ploughed fields, Kalambaka, the region's main town is tiny, which seems surprising for such a celebrated site.
The monastery-topped crags tower over the town's tangled web of streets, casting eerie shadows on the whitewashed facades.
'We are used to living in their shadow, but we are also imbibed with their sense of holiness. Many of us have friends in the monasteries – we grew up with the monks and nuns,' George told me as we sat at the terrace of family-owned Meteoran Panorama restaurant in warm April sunshine, gorging on homemade wild mushroom soup.
Twenty-four monasteries were built here between the 12th and 14th centuries, but only six remain today. The late travel writer Patrick Leigh Fermor, who visited in the 1950s, said of the monks: 'Like the peregrines, Egyptian vultures and black storks that still nest on the virtually inaccessible rock faces, they became sky dwellers, at home in a world of soaring stone.'
'Until a road was built in 1949, the only way to get up there was to climb the sheer rock face,' George said, pointing to one of the monasteries standing on its rocky pillar, draped in vivid green moss. 'Meteora comes from the verb ' meteorizo ', which means 'suspended in the air'. I think you can see why.'
From afar we watched a long line of visitors, as colourful as Buddhist prayer flags, hiking the steep, stepped path to the largest monastery, Moni Megalou Meteorou. 'They are often closed in the afternoon, so you need to get here early. If you have a few days to spare, hiking is definitely the best way to see them,' George said as we drove on to Moni Megalou's main church, where we marvelled at the richly detailed 16th-century frescos depicting gory scenes of martyrdom.
'People couldn't read, so it was like a medieval comic book, but with a serious message,' George whispered as we gazed at the ghostly white skull of Athanasios, the monk who founded the monastery in the 14th century.
Buffeted by wild winds whisking across the terrace of the stocky-turreted monastery, George pointed out the caves that were burrowed into the cinnamon-coloured cliffs opposite by ninth-century hermits. 'All week they'd live alone in their caves, but on Sundays they'd come down to the valley and meet each other to gossip and exchange the latest news,' he laughed.
Across from Megalou Meteorou, Agios Varvaras Rousanou is home to a community of nuns who were invited to take over the abandoned monastery in the 1980s to save it from ruin. In the convent's frescoed chapel I met 20-year-old Lina from Kalabaka, who told me that she'd played here since she was a child. 'When I broke up with my first boyfriend I even stayed here for 10 days. I felt closer to heaven here – it really helped me,' she said.
Inevitably, Meteora's monasteries have starred in a string of Hollywood epics. Scenes from The Clash of the Titans were filmed here and digitally altered images of Meteora were used as a backdrop for the sky cells (prison cells with open walls) in Game of Thrones.
Our next stop, the Monastery of the Agia Triada Holy Trinity, was the setting for the nail-biting scene in the 1970s Bond film For Your Eyes Only where Roger Moore scales the vertical cliff-face to save a secret device from falling into Soviet hands.
Today, only one monk lives in this monastery, one of the most remote. 'It's still difficult to reach the Holy Trinity now, but until the 1920s there weren't even any stairs – you could only get here by climbing a 130ft rope ladder,' George said.
Inside 14th-century Moni Varlaam, we visited a small museum where exhibits include a striking collection of medieval manuscripts, and a net that was once used to hoist monks up to the monastery.
George told me that the monks had a mischievous sense of humour. 'When nervous visitors asked how often they replaced the rope, the monks would reply, 'Whenever it breaks,'' he laughed.
At our last stop, the 16th-century Monastery of Saint Nikolas Anapafsas, monks were recovering from a week of Easter celebrations. Like Christmas and New Year rolled into one, this is the country's most important religious celebration, when Greeks return home from all over the world to be with their loved ones.
It starts on Good Friday, with mournful bells; at midnight on Saturday, the Holy Fire, which is brought over each year from Jerusalem, is shared from candle to candle; this is followed by Sunday's riotous feasting to celebrate Christ's resurrection.
'Can you imagine what it's like to celebrate Easter in such a holy place?' George whispered, as the chanting of monks swelled in the background.
'They might make films here, but there is nothing fake about Meteora. When you stand on one of our heavenly pillars so close to the sky, how can you not believe in God?'
How to do it
Visit Meteora (0030 24320 23820) offers day-trips to Meteora from Athens, from £49pp. Aegean Airlines flies from London Heathrow to Athens from £157 return.