Meteora is a cluster of giant sandstone and conglomerate rock pillars in the Trikala regional unit of Thessaly, Greece, between the town of Kalabaka and the village of Kastraki, with Eastern Orthodox monasteries built on their summits from the 14th century onward. Twenty-four monasteries stood on the rocks at their 16th-century peak; six survive, among them Great Meteoron (founded 1356) and Varlaam (rebuilt from 1517), and four are still run as monasteries. UNESCO inscribed Meteora on the World Heritage List in 1988 as a mixed site, recognised for both its natural landscape and its religious architecture. The name comes from the Greek for “lofty” or “elevated”, the same root as the word meteor.
Sandstone and Conglomerate: How the Pillars of Meteora Formed
The rocks rise abruptly at the north-western edge of the Plain of Thessaly, where the flat farmland meets the Pindus Mountains, close to the Pineios river. They look like volcanic plugs, but they are nothing of the kind. Meteora is made of sedimentary rock: sandstone and conglomerate, a coarse rock of pebbles and boulders cemented in finer material. That material was laid down over millions of years as streams carried stone, sand and mud into a delta at the edge of a lake.
Around 60 million years ago, during the Paleogene period, earth movements pushed this thick body of sediment upward into a high plateau and cracked it along vertical faults. Water, wind and extremes of heat and cold then worked down those cracks, widening them into gorges and leaving the blocks between them standing as free towers. Towers carved by weathering exist elsewhere too. What sets Meteora apart is how uniform the rock is, leaving few signs of layering, and how sharply the erosion has cut it vertically in one small area while the surrounding mountains were shaped quite differently.
The towers are still moving. A magnitude 7 earthquake shook them in 1954 without bringing the thin pillars down, but rockfalls remain a constant risk: in 2005 a large boulder blocked the access road to the monasteries for days. Plants grow thickly from the cliff faces, fed by water held in cracks, and the slopes below are now densely wooded.
People lived beside these rocks long before the monks. Caves in the area were inhabited between about 50,000 and 5,000 years ago. At Theopetra Cave, 4 km from Kalabaka, a stone wall across two-thirds of the entrance, built about 23,000 years ago, probably as a windbreak during the last Ice Age, is one of the oldest known built structures in the world.
From Hermits’ Caves to Great Meteoron, 1356–1372
The first recorded inhabitants after prehistory were hermit monks, who by the 9th century were living in hollows and fissures in the rock towers. They lived alone and met only on Sundays and feast days to worship at a chapel at the foot of a rock called Doupiani. By the late 11th and early 12th centuries, a loose monastic community known as the Skete of Stagoi had formed around the church of the Theotokos.
The change from scattered hermits to fortified monasteries came in the 14th century, when northern Greece was unstable and Ottoman raiders were pressing on the rich Thessalian plain. In 1344 a monk from Mount Athos, Athanasios Koinovitis, later called Athanasios the Meteorite, brought a group of followers to Meteora. Between 1356 and 1372 he founded the Monastery of Great Meteoron on the summit known as the Broad Rock. His patron was Simeon Uroš, the local ruler based in nearby Trikala, who in 1356 had proclaimed himself Emperor of the Serbs and Greeks. Simeon’s son John Uroš succeeded him in 1370, gave up power three years later to become a monk at Great Meteoron, and died there in the early 1420s.
The Ottomans took full control of Thessaly in the second half of the 15th century, and the rock monasteries became places of retreat from the new rulers below. More than 20 were built in all. Great Meteoron flourished in the 16th century on imperial and royal donations and at one point had over 300 monks. Thessaly passed to the Kingdom of Greece under the 1881 Convention of Constantinople.
The Six Surviving Monasteries of Meteora
Only six of the 24 monasteries survive, and these six make up the UNESCO property; most of the rest are in ruins. Counts of how many still function differ. One recent tally, as of December 2025, puts it at four occupied monasteries, three of monks and one of nuns, with St Nicholas Anapausas and Rousanou no longer in active monastic use; another counts all six as functioning, four of men and two of women, each with fewer than ten residents.
| Monastery | Founded or built | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Great Meteoron (Transfiguration) | 1356–1372 | Oldest and largest; three monks in 2015 |
| Varlaam (All Saints) | Begun c. 1350; rebuilt from 1517 | Second largest; seven monks in 2015 |
| Rousanou | 14th century; frescoed 1540 | Stands at 484 m above sea level |
| St Nicholas Anapausas | Late 14th century | On a narrow rock about 80 m high |
| Holy Trinity (Agia Triada) | 1475–1476 | Site settled by the monk Dometius in 1438 |
| St Stephen | 14th century; new church 1798 | A convent since 1961; 28 nuns in 2015 |
Great Meteoron’s main church, or katholikon, is dedicated to the Transfiguration of Christ. The complex also includes the founder’s hermitage carved into the rock, a domed kitchen beside the refectory, an old hospital and three chapels, one of them in a cave.
Varlaam is named after a monk who climbed its rock in 1350 and built three churches there. After his death the site lay empty for about two centuries until two brothers from Ioannina, Theophanes and Nektarios Apsarades, began rebuilding in October 1517. Tradition says they spent 22 years hauling materials to the summit, while the building itself took only about 20 days. Today a museum there holds relics and church treasures.
Rousanou sits near the middle of the group, and its name may come from the Russian monks believed to have settled there first. St Nicholas Anapausas, the first monastery pilgrims reach on the road up, is so cramped that its floors are stacked one above another and linked by an inner staircase; the name Anapausas, meaning “resting”, reflects its role as a stopping place for pilgrims. Holy Trinity was a filming location for the 1981 James Bond film For Your Eyes Only. St Stephen stands on a broad, plateau-like rock, and its 1798 church makes it the newest building in the group. During the world wars several monasteries were bombed or ransacked.
Rope Nets, Ladders and the 1920s Rock-Cut Steps
The point of building on the pillars was that almost nobody could get up. For the first centuries the only ways to the top were long ladders lashed together, which could be pulled up when danger threatened, and large nets or baskets hauled up on ropes. Goods and people travelled the same way. Until the 1600s ropes and baskets were the main means of moving anything between the plain and the summits. According to a story repeated by visitors, the ropes were replaced only “when the Lord let them break”.
UNESCO’s own description of the site singles out the net in which pilgrims were hoisted up the 373 m cliff below Varlaam as a symbol of a traditional way of life now under threat. The change came in the 1920s, when steps were cut into the rock and a bridge linked the complex to the nearby plateau; today the monasteries are reached by staircases and paths cut into the rock. Access had already started to open up in other ways. In 1921 Queen Marie of Romania visited and became the first woman allowed inside Great Meteoron.
Kalabaka, Kastraki and the 1988 UNESCO Listing
The gateways to the rocks are Kalabaka, at their foot, and Kastraki, the smaller neighbouring village. Kalabaka is the seat of the municipality of Meteora in the Trikala regional unit; at the 2021 census the municipal unit had 11,492 people, 8,573 of them in the town itself. It is also the north-western terminus of the old Thessaly Railways line, now part of the Greek railway organisation OSE.
The town is older than the monasteries. An inscription in the church of Saint John the Baptist records an ancient Greek settlement called Aiginion, and in the Byzantine period the town was a fortress and bishopric named Stagoi, first mentioned under Emperor Leo VI (886–912). Its medieval cathedral, the Church of the Dormition, dates from the late 11th or early 12th century and stands on the remains of an earlier church. The modern name Kalabaka is of Turkish origin and is said to mean “powerful fortress”. Since 1991 the town has again been the seat of an Orthodox bishop, the Metropolis of Stagoi and Meteora.
UNESCO added Meteora to the World Heritage List in 1988, one of five Greek sites inscribed that year. It is one of only three mixed sites in Greece, alongside Mount Athos and Mount Olympus, which means it is protected for its landscape as well as its buildings. Climbers, hikers and mountain bikers now share the rocks with pilgrims, and the annual Meteora MTB Race is held there. For more of Greece’s World Heritage, see our guide to the Acropolis of Athens or the sanctuary at Delphi, and if you are planning a trip, check our advice on the best time to visit Greece before you go.