Things to do
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Kastraki
A village tucked against the foot of the rocks a short way north of Kalabaka, closer to the monasteries and quieter at night. The Doupiani rock rises straight behind the houses. Old footpaths climb from the upper lanes through the woods to Great Meteoron and Varlaam, and the village is the base for climbers on the conglomerate towers.
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Meteora
Six monasteries on top of Meteora's sandstone pillars still let you in, each on its own rock. Plan the day around which ones are open, then link them by road or on the old paths.
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Varlaam Monastery
At Varlaam, the second-largest monastery at Meteora, you get a church painted with frescoes and a museum inside the same walls, both reached up one stair.
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Adrachti
Adrachti is one of the thinnest rock pillars at Meteora, standing just east of Kastraki, and a place to watch the sunset. Kastraki is a 15 to 20 minute walk from the centre of Kalabaka, and taxis are plentiful between the two.
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Church of the Dormition of the Virgin
Kalabaka's fourteenth-century Byzantine church is where the marked M6 path to Holy Trinity monastery starts: 3 km through pine woods on a steady climb, with about 100 steps at the top. Joined to the M7, it makes a half-day walk of about 5 km.
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Great Meteoron
The oldest, highest and largest of the monasteries, founded in the mid fourteenth century by a monk from Mount Athos who named the rock. Around three hundred steps lead down and then up to the gate. Inside are a frescoed church, the old kitchen with its blackened dome, a carpenter's shop, wine barrels of remarkable size and a shelf of the skulls of former monks.
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Hermit caves of Badovas
These hermit caves line the local road that runs south-east from Kastraki's main square to the Holy Monastery of Saint Anthony, so one walk takes in both. Paths around the rocks do not always show where they lead, so carry a map, and download it offline because phone signal can drop.
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Holy Trinity Monastery
The most dramatically placed of the six, alone on a slender column separated from the road by a ravine. Visitors walk down into the gap and climb some 140 steps cut into the rock face. A Bond film used it as a villain's lair in 1981. It is small inside, and because of the climb it is also the least crowded. The view over Kalabaka is complete.
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Kalabaka Friday market
A weekly farmers' market fills Vlachava Street in Kalabaka on Friday mornings, with stalls of local produce. Food and drink are hard to find up among the monasteries, so the market is a good place to stock up before a day on the paths or the monastery road.
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Monastery of St. Nicholas Anapafsas
The first monastery on the road up from Kastraki, built on a pinnacle so narrow that its rooms are stacked over several floors. The small church on the upper level holds frescoes painted in 1527 by Theophanes the Cretan, the earliest of his works to carry his signature. The climb from the road is steep but short. It closes one day a week.
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Monastery of St. Stephen
The one Meteora monastery reached without any steps: a short bridge crosses from the car park straight to the gate, which makes it the choice for anyone who cannot manage the stairs elsewhere. It has been a convent since 1961. Wartime shelling and the civil war damaged the old church. The terrace looks straight down on the roofs of Kalabaka and across the plain.
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Roussanou Monastery
A convent that covers the whole top of a low pillar in the middle of the valley, so that its walls seem to continue the rock. Two small bridges replaced the rope ladders in the last century. The nuns keep a garden and sell honey at the door. Frescoes in the church, from 1560, include martyrdoms painted in vivid detail.
