Meteora Full Day Private Trip from Athens

Overview

Meteora is a cluster of sandstone towers rising straight out of the plain in central Greece, and on top of them sit monasteries — built up there from the fourteenth century onwards by monks who wanted to be unreachable, and who for a long time were. Six are still in use. This is a private day trip to them from Athens, with your own vehicle and guide.

Getting there

Meteora is around 340 kilometres north of Athens, which is why this runs to twelve hours or more. The drive takes roughly four hours each way, north through Boeotia and Thessaly, and being private means it goes at your pace rather than a coach timetable — you stop when you want to.

The approach is the part nobody expects. The plain stays flat for a long time and then the rock towers simply stand up out of it, grey and vertical, with buildings on the tops of them.

The monasteries

Of the twenty-four monasteries built here, six remain active, and your day takes in two or three of them — each closes on a different day of the week, so your guide sets the order once the day is fixed.

Inside, the churches are painted floor to ceiling with Byzantine wall paintings, dark with age and candle smoke. There are refectories, kitchens with their original hearths, and the winches and rope nets by which everything — supplies, building materials and, until relatively recently, people — was hauled up the cliff face. Stone staircases cut into the rock replaced them; those stairs are how you will be going up.

Worth knowing

This is a long day with a great deal of driving in it. Start early, and expect to be back in Athens in the evening.

The monasteries are working religious houses with a dress code that is enforced at the door: shoulders covered for everyone, and knees covered — men in long trousers, women in a skirt below the knee, with wrap skirts usually available to borrow at the entrance. Each monastery charges its own small admission.

Getting up to each one means a flight of stone steps, sometimes a long one, often exposed. Wear proper shoes. Opening days vary by monastery and by season, and they close for services, which is beyond the operator’s control.