Meteora

Meteora tickets: which one to buy

Meteora is not one ticket but six. Each working monastery on the rock pillars charges its own small entrance fee at the gate, payable in cash, and each keeps its own closing day, so the practical question is how you get between them rather than what you buy. Driving yourself is cheapest and most flexible, since the road loops past every monastery with parking at each. Tours from the villages below, Kalabaka and Kastraki, run half-day and full-day versions that usually include three or four monasteries plus the transport, with the entrance fees often left for you to pay.

Day trips from Athens and Thessaloniki cover the long drive in a single exhausting day, five to six hours on the road in total; the train to Kalabaka and an overnight stay is a gentler version of the same trip. Sunset tours go to the viewpoints rather than inside the monasteries, which are shut by then, and cost less because there is nothing to pay at a gate. Hiking tours follow the old monks' paths up from Kastraki, a good option if you would rather approach the rocks on foot than by coach.

Visiting Meteora: what to see

Twenty-four monasteries were founded on these sandstone pillars from the fourteenth century; six are still in use and open to visitors. The Great Meteoron is the largest and oldest, with a domed katholikon frescoed in the sixteenth century, a museum of monastic life and a plain room of stacked skulls. Varlaam, across a short saddle, keeps the net and windlass that hauled up supplies and, until the 1920s, visitors as well. Roussanou stands on the narrowest pillar and is the one on every postcard.

Holy Trinity requires the longest climb, around 140 steps cut into the rock, and appeared in a James Bond film. St Stephen is a convent and the easiest to reach, because a bridge replaces the stairs, which makes it the best choice for anyone unsteady on steps. St Nicholas Anapausas is small, quiet and has the finest single set of frescoes, painted by Theophanes the Cretan. All of them involve stairs, wind and drops, and none takes more than twenty minutes inside once you are up.

Meteora opening hours and the best time to go

Spring and autumn are the best seasons, with clear light and comfortable temperatures. July and August bring heat on the exposed steps and full car parks by mid-morning. Winter is atmospheric, with mist between the pillars, but hours shorten and snow occasionally closes the road. Each monastery closes one full day a week and the days differ, so check the current rota before you plan a route; visiting three or four in a day is realistic, all six is not. Dress code is strict and enforced at every gate.

Women must wear a skirt below the knee, and wraparound skirts hang at the entrances for those who arrive in trousers; men need long trousers, and shoulders must be covered for everyone. Photography is allowed outside but forbidden inside the churches. Arrive at opening, around nine, for the emptiest interiors, then use the late afternoon for the viewpoints, when the western light hits the rock faces. Sunset from the Psaropetra platform is the classic ending and costs nothing.