Meteora tour from Athens trips join the Greek capital to Thessaly, in the company of a host. Monasteries stand there on tall rock pillars near the town of Kalambaka. Themes include Thessaly, the Holy Trinity Monastery, Trikala and its Osman Shah Mosque. Pyli and the Byzantine church of Porta Panagia come next. Four short answers cover Rousanou, St Nicholas Anapausas, Saint Stephen and Theopetra Cave. Meteora also fits an Athens Delphi Meteora tour and a classical Greece tour. Other trips around the country sit under Greece tours.
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What is a Meteora tour from Athens?
A Meteora tour from Athens is a trip with a host to Thessaly, in northern central Greece. The Meteora monasteries sit in the valley of the Pineios, on the Thessalian plains near Kalambaka. Larissa serves as the regional capital.
Thessaly is both a traditional geographic area and a modern administrative region of Greece. A geographic area is marked out by its land, while an administrative region is marked out by law. Since 1987, it has been one of 13 Greek regions. The region of a Meteora tour from Athens also covers the Sporades islands.
A Meteora tour from Athens takes place in a region that joined the modern Greek state in 1881. Before that year, Thessaly spent four and a half centuries under Ottoman, or Turkish, rule. Cavalry means soldiers on horseback. Thessalian cavalry played a key part in Alexander the Great’s wins at the battles of Issus and Gaugamela.
Greek myth sets the battle of the Titans and the Olympians on the Plain of Thessaly. The plain lies between Mount Othrys and Mount Olympus. From 1271 to 1318, Thessaly was an independent despotate, a state under a ruler called a despot. A ruling family, or dynasty, founded by John I Doukas ran it.
- Cattle: Thessaly leads every other area of Greece in the raising of cattle.
- Old speech: The Aeolic dialect, a local form of Greek, was spoken in Thessaly but never written.
- People: The Karagounides, an ethnic Greek subgroup, form a notable population group in Thessaly.
Thessaly, home of a Meteora tour from Athens, has neighbours on every side. Macedonia borders Thessaly on the north, and Epirus lies to the west. Central Greece borders it to the south. To the east, its coast meets the Aegean Sea.
What story does a Meteora tour from Athens draw from the Holy Trinity Monastery?
A Meteora tour from Athens connects with Holy Trinity, which stands northeast of Kalambaka. This Greek Orthodox monastery follows the Christian faith of the Church of Greece. It sits on top of a rocky precipice, a sheer cliff, more than 400 metres high.
Holy Trinity lies in the area of a Meteora tour from Athens. A church went up inside its compound between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The apse, the rounded end of the church behind the altar, holds a pseudo-trefoil window. That window imitates a three-lobed leaf. White columns, arches and rose-coloured tiles mark the building.
In the story of a Meteora tour from Athens, the esonarthex gained a barrel vault in 1689. An esonarthex is the inner entrance hall of a church. A barrel vault is a curved, tunnel-shaped ceiling. It was embellished, or decorated, in 1692. Supplies once rose in baskets on rope-ladders, and a winch now does that work.
St John the Baptist has a small chapel there, cut into the rock. Its frescoes, or paintings on damp plaster, date from the seventeenth century. It once held precious manuscripts. These treasures were looted in World War II, when German forces occupied the site. To the northeast, a second chapel honours St Athanasius of Tzertzi.
- Guest: Patrick Leigh Fermor reportedly visited these monasteries as a guest of Varlaam’s abbot, or head monk.
- Means: Even at that time, Holy Trinity counted among the poorest monasteries in Meteora.
- Paintings: Its sixteenth-century frescoes are said to be post-Byzantine, meaning painted after the Byzantine era.
A Meteora tour from Athens takes place where 24 monasteries were first built. Holy Trinity is one of that number. In 1988, the six surviving monasteries joined the UNESCO World Heritage List. This register records places of value to all humanity.
How does a Meteora tour from Athens connect with the city of Trikala?
A Meteora tour from Athens unfolds near Trikala, which lies close to Meteora and the southern Pindus mountains. Trikala, in northwestern Thessaly, heads the regional unit of the same name. The Lithaios, which feeds the Pineios, flows through the city.
In the background of a Meteora tour from Athens, the name Trikala comes from ancient Trikka. Trikka was named after a nymph, a minor goddess of nature. She was a daughter of Peneus or Asopos. Homer’s Iliad, an ancient epic poem, says the city sent thirty ships to the Trojan War. Machaon and Podalirius led them.
Varousi, below the fortress, was a Christian quarter in Ottoman days. Today it is a conservation area, protected by law for its heritage. Traditional buildings put up between the 17th and 19th centuries survive there. Within the setting of a Meteora tour from Athens, Varousi holds the oldest churches of the city.
After 1881, Trikala gained a Hippodamian grid and Neoclassical buildings in its centre. A Hippodamian grid sets streets at right angles, and Neoclassical design copies ancient styles. The Central Bridge of 1886 joins the central square to the main pedestrian street. In 1906, Greece’s first Agricultural Cooperative, a union of farmers, was founded in Trikala.
- Mill: The Mill of Matsopoulos, built in 1884, now serves as a museum and cultural centre.
- Music: The Tsitsanis Museum sits on the upper floor of the Twin Ottoman bath.
- Bath: The restored Twin Ottoman bath also holds an archaeological collection of ceramics, or fired clay.
A Meteora tour from Athens unfolds in the home region of Vassilis Tsitsanis, born in Trikala in 1915. He wrote songs and played the bouzouki. A bouzouki is a string instrument with a long neck. The city centre became a pedestrian zone in the 21st century.
What does a Meteora tour from Athens gain from the Osman Shah Mosque?
A Meteora tour from Athens has an Ottoman landmark in Trikala: the Osman Shah Mosque, completed in 1570. Ottoman names the Turkish empire that once ruled the city. A mosque is a building for Muslim prayer. It is also known as the Kursum, or Leaden, Mosque.
Osman Shah, also called Kara Osman Pasha, commissioned the building. He was the son of Hafize Sultan, a daughter of Selim I. He long lived in Trikala as governor of its sanjak, or Ottoman district. A Meteora tour from Athens and this mosque share one region, Thessaly.
The Ottoman imperial architect Mimar Sinan designed the mosque. Imperial means serving the court of the sultan. It is the only work by him that stands in modern Greece. A square prayer hall lies under a large half-sphere dome, 18 metres across. Its exact dating is uncertain, and sources point to the late 1550s.
Osman attached a madrasah, an alms house and a caravanserai to the mosque. A madrasah is a school, and a caravanserai is an inn for traders. He was buried in a türbe, or tomb, in its southern courtyard after his death in 1567/8. For a Meteora tour from Athens, Trikala keeps it as its last standing mosque.
- Minaret: An ashlar minaret, a prayer tower of cut stone, stands on the northwestern corner.
- Tomb: The founder’s octagonal türbe now stores finds from archaeological digs.
- New use: Abandoned around the 1890s, the building was later turned over to cultural use.
The Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi, writing in the 17th century, counted at least eight mosques in Trikala. Within the Thessaly of a Meteora tour from Athens, this mosque now serves as an events space. Its front portico, a porch on columns, was rebuilt in the 1998 renovations.
Why does Pyli matter to a Meteora tour from Athens and to Thessaly?
A Meteora tour from Athens has a neighbour in Pyli, a municipality in the Trikala regional unit. The river Portaikos, a branch stream of the Pineios, runs through the town. About 4,000 people live in the town itself.
A temple to Aphaia Athena stood in the area around Pyli, and its ruins survive. Pyli has always acted as the chief trading hub for nearby settlements. The ancient fortress of Athenaion stood at 1356 m above sea level. Julius Caesar destroyed it in 46 BC. BC stands for before Christ.
Cosmas of Aetolia visited Pyli, but its people ignored his teachings. Tradition says he cursed the town, so its people moved to the south bank. In Ottoman times, in the land of a Meteora tour from Athens, Ali Pasha’s army camped at Pyli. The troops burnt a large old plane tree, yet its strong roots saved it.
St Vissarion built the arched bridge at Pouri in 1514. Until 1936, it alone joined the Thessalian plains with the Pindos villages. The bridge runs 67 m from end to end and 2.05 m across. Its centre stands 30.5 m high. Pindos is another spelling of Pindus, the range west of a Meteora tour from Athens.
- Legend: Tradition says a bear helped carry the raw materials for the Pouri bridge.
- Convent: At 640 m, the Monastery of the Theotokos, or Mother of God, at Goura is for women.
- Founding: Money from the archon Dimakis, a local leader, paid for the founding of the Goura monastery in 1743.
The rocks of a Meteora tour from Athens lie in the Trikala regional unit. The municipality of Pyli was formed in 2011, when 7 former municipalities merged. A municipality is a town council district. Pyli also serves as an education centre for the villages around it.
Which Byzantine past links Porta Panagia with a Meteora tour from Athens and Pyli?
A Meteora tour from Athens has a Byzantine neighbour in Porta Panagia, a church near Pyli. Byzantine names the age of the Roman state in the east. The church’s full name is Panagia tis Portas. Panagia is a Greek title for the Virgin Mary.
The church honours the Dormition of the Theotokos. The Dormition marks the falling asleep, or death, of the Mother of God. It began as the katholikon, or main church, of a monastery named for the Unconquerable Panagia. An ancient temple stood there first. Column remnants from it survive outside the exonarthex, or outer porch.
Byzantine emperors Andronikos II and Andronikos III Palaiologos confirmed the monastery’s large holdings in the region. Saint Bessarion was born in the old village of Megale Porta. He became Metropolitan, or senior bishop, of Larissa. In 1843, within the lands of a Meteora tour from Athens, the church passed to the Dousikou Monastery. It stayed the parish church of Porta.
Lower side aisles flank the central aisle, set apart by columns that carry six arches. To the east, three three-sided apses close the building. In the Byzantine past of a Meteora tour from Athens, the exonarthex arrived in the late 14th century. It follows the cross-in-square type, which sets a cross inside a square.
- Walls: Up to 2 m high, the walls use large limestone blocks, part of them set as crosses.
- Decoration: Ceramic patterns of jagged bands, meanders, or winding lines, and crosses run along the outer walls.
- Founder: John Doukas, the founder, lies buried before the south wall of the church.
A Meteora tour from Athens and Porta Panagia share the Trikala area of Thessaly. Much of the original interior decoration was lost in a fire in 1855. The marble templon, a screen before the altar, survived. The archaeologist Anastasios Orlandos restored it.
What do travellers ask about Meteora tour from Athens, and what are the answers?
A Meteora tour from Athens raises questions about three rock monasteries and a cave. Rousanou now serves as a convent for nuns. St Nicholas Anapausas is a former monastery. Saint Stephen rests on a plateau-like rock, and Theopetra Cave lies 3 km south of Kalambaka.
Before a Meteora tour from Athens, what is the Monastery of Rousanou?
Rousanou crowns a tall rocky precipice, which is a steep face of rock. Its height reaches more than 415 metres above the floor of the Pineios valley. A convent is a house where nuns live together under religious rules. Rousanou lies in the middle of the Meteora site.
On a Meteora tour from Athens, what was St Nicholas Anapausas?
The monastery of St Nicholas Anapausas stands atop a small, narrow rock. A former monastery is one where monks no longer live as a community. The main group of Meteora monasteries grew up near this rock. The monasteries of Saint Stephen and Holy Trinity stand apart, further to the south.
Before a Meteora tour from Athens, who lives at Saint Stephen?
Saint Stephen became a nunnery, a house of nuns, in 1961. By 2015, it was home to 28 nuns. A nun is a woman who has taken religious vows and lives in a community. Vows are solemn promises made to God. Its buildings include the hestia, the Greek word for its kitchen.
On a Meteora tour from Athens, what is Theopetra Cave?
Digs, or excavations, at the cave began in 1987 under N. Kyparissi-Apostolika. The work aimed to answer questions about Paleolithic Thessaly. Paleolithic means the Old Stone Age, the earliest human period. Just south of Theopetra village lie the ruins of the Monastery of St Theodore. The village of Agii Theodori stands close to those ruins.