AGIOS STEFANOS METEORON MONASTERY

Set on the edge of a 300 m-high cliff, the female monastery of St. Stephen of Meteora (Ιερά Μονή Αγίου Στεφάνου Μετεώρων/Iera Moni Agiou Stefanou Meteoron) offers plunging views over Kalambaka and the Penea valley with the great peaks of Pindus in the distance. Despite its appearance as an impregnable fortress, it is the easiest of the six monasteries in the Unesco zone open to the public to access: here, there are no stairs to climb, just a footbridge to cross. But beware of vertigo! You have to cross a deep precipice to reach the rocky column where ascetics, monks and then nuns have made their home since the ^12th century. Thanks to the wealth bestowed upon it by the Byzantine emperor Andronic III, who stayed here in 1333, the complex was built "en dur" from the ^14th century onwards, and took on its present form in the ^18th and ^19th centuries. For two centuries (1534-1743), the monastery even achieved the enviable status of "stavropegia", under the sole authority of the Patriarch of Constantinople. Not one, but two main churches remain from this prestigious past.

Frescoes, garden and museum. The ancient catholicon dedicated to St. Stephen dates from the ^15th century and was remodeled and painted around 1545. Damaged by the Ottomans in 1821, then by the Germans during the Occupation, it has nevertheless preserved some of its original ^16th-century frescoes: the dormition of the Mother of God, the meeting of Christ and the Samaritan woman around a well, the Visitation reunion scene between Mary and her pregnant cousin Elisabeth... Through the large garden, we then reach the present catholicon, dating from 1798. Dedicated to the ^3rd-century martyr saint Charalampe of Magnesia (Agios Charalambos), it was entirely repainted in 1980 by the "Painter of Angels", contemporary artist Vlasis Tsotsonis, including a strikingly detailed Last Judgment. Finally, the former refectory now houses a small museum: illuminated manuscripts, priestly vestments, a moving icon of the Descent from the Cross by the Cretan master Emmanuel Tzanes (1637-1694), a gold-embroidered epitaph from 1857... For your Meteora tour, note that this monastery is the one furthest east and south of the listed area, and is close to Agia Triada. So you can start or finish here: the distance is the same coming from Kastraki (from the west) as from Kalambaka (from the east).