Meteora – Agia Trias (Holy Trinity) Monastery

Agia Trias monastery – as seen in the 1981 Bond film For Your Eyes Only
 – our hiking challenge for the morning    

In the 9^th century AD, anasceic group of hermit monks moved up to Meteora’s ancient rock pinnacles and became the first people to inhabit the area since the Neolithic Era. They lived in hollows and fissures in the rock towers, some as high as 550m above the plain. This great height, combined with the sheer cliff walls, kept away all but the most determined visitors. Initially, the hermits led a life of solitude, meeting only on Sundays and special days to worship and pray in a chapel built at the foot of one of the rocks known as Dhoupiani.

By the late 11th and early 12th centuries, a rudimentary monastic state had formed, centred around the church of Theotokos (still standing today). In 1344, Athanasios Koinovitis from Mount Athos brought a group of followers to Meteora and founded the Megalo Meteoro (Great Meteoron) monastery. As the century, and the Turkish occupation of northern Greece, progressed the hermit monks built further monasteries; in total about 24 were constructed over the years.

View back down the valley towards Kalabaka   

So, the morning of Wednesday 15 June found us making a relatively early start on the monopati (monastic footpath) from Kalabaka to Agia Trias monastery. The path is only about 1.5km long but includes a climb of about 450m so it was a good post-breakfast workout. We were very fortunate with the weather and had some decent views down to Kalabaka and across the valley to distract us from the heat.

Agia Trias Monastery from a vantage point later in the day.
Under the top left of the rock stack you can just see some
of the steps cut into the rockface in the early 20^th century 

Access to the monasteries was originally deliberately difficult, requiring either long ladders lashed together or large nets to haul up both goods and people. Since the 1920s there has been an improvement in the access arrangements at all the monasteries: steps were cut into the sides of the rock pinnacles, making the sites accessible from the nearby plateau via a bridge or similar. The top of the monopati from Kalabaka to Agia Trias joins with the ‘new’ access way to the monastery, which itself leads from the road on the plateau to the base of the monastery’s steps. We lost count of the number of steps we did in total that day but that particular entrance probably numbered around 300.

We stopped at the top grateful for a breather and the chance to have a glance around. We had heard strimmers as we came up the steps and could see the monastery’s garden being tended by a 2 contracted gardeners and a monk (supervising?).

Once inside we first saw the beautiful 17^th century katholicon. Apparently the paintings of the Judgement of Pilate and the Hospitality of Abraham are particularly fine but, to be honest, we weren’t able to pick them out. Photos are not permitted of the katholicon and we were not allowed to enter either, which made viewing a little difficult (very glad that we weren’t on a 50-seater coach tour!).

From the church we were directed on ‘To the Net’. Agia Trias still has a (non-working) example of the winch system which was used to haul people and goods up into the monastery. This required quite some leap of faith as the ropes were replaced, so the story goes, only ‘when the Lord let them break’.

Like many of the monasteries, Agia Trias has been subject to a number of rebuilds since its founding in 1475. The area pictured above is now primarily a passageway from the katholicon to the garden at the back of the monastery. However, in the monastery’s heyday each of the niches (on the left of the right-hand picture above) would have been the location of a monk’s cell. Many of them would have had awesome views (picture left above).

The garden at the rear of the monastery is lovely with an attractive paved area, a small veg patch for the monks and some incredible views.

The walls around some of the rocky outcrops looked to be relatively new and we wondered at the head for heights the builders must have required.

View across to Megalo Meteoro, Varlaam and Roussanou monasteries (from l to r)    

View down into Kalabaka. Our hotel is in the centre towards the bottom of the picture   

Having enjoyed our tour, we headed out, down the steps, along and then up the access road to the ‘main’ road around Meteora’s plateau. From just under the main road we had a good view along Agia Trias’ modern mini cable car system, which has replaced the manually operated winch we had seen earlier. Most of the monasteries have a similar system so that select visitors and, presumably, the resident monks don’t have to do the steps each time they want to enter or leave the monastery [Ed: it’d do wonders for fitness and memory though – you certainly wouldn’t want to forget the car keys if you had to ‘run’ the gauntlet of 300-ish steps each time!].

So, one down, four more to visit (Roussanou was closed on the day we visited). We planned to visit Agios Stefano on foot and then return to Kalabaka to collect the car so that we could visit the 3 other monasteries by road. With the other monasteries all located on the other side of the valley, we had decided to drive to them from east to west along the road on the plateau, so giving us the opportunity to fully appreciate all the views. Though a purist might do the visit entirely on foot (and we saw a few people doing so) we had limited time available and we knew that we’d certainly get our quota of exercise for the day – there were definitely still plenty of steps to do!

Meteora, Greece