I'll be honest about why I went to Meteora. I'd seen the drone shots on Instagram — impossible rock pillars with monasteries balanced on top, golden sunset light, that kind of thing. I figured it was a photo opportunity dressed up as a cultural site. Two hours, a few good shots, done.
I was wrong, and it was Holy Trinity Monastery that changed my mind.
Of the six active Meteora monasteries, Holy Trinity (Agia Triada) is the most isolated. It sits on a rock pillar separated from the others, reached by 140 steps carved directly into the sandstone. The approach is vertiginous — stone stairs clinging to a cliff face with a metal railing that feels like an afterthought.
The monastery appeared in the James Bond film "For Your Eyes Only" (1981), which is how most people know of it. What the film didn't show is what it feels like to climb those steps slowly, with the valley dropping away beneath you and the wind picking up as you gain height.
I passed a group of German tourists on the way up. One of them said, in English, "I can't believe monks did this every day." Neither could I.
Holy Trinity is the smallest of the main monasteries, and the quietest. The day I visited (a Tuesday morning in October), there were maybe eight other visitors. Entry is €3. The frescoes inside the small church are beautiful — Byzantine faces with gold halos and expressions that manage to be both serene and slightly unsettling.
But it's the courtyard that got me. A small stone terrace looking out over the valley, the other rock pillars visible in the distance, the only sound being wind and the occasional bird. A monk was tending a vegetable garden in one corner. He didn't look up.
I sat on a stone bench and did something I almost never do on trips. I stopped taking photos. I just sat.
The first hermits came to Meteora's caves in the 11th century. By the 14th century, they were building monasteries on the pillars — hauling materials up in baskets and nets, spending years constructing buildings in the sky. At its peak, there were 24 monasteries. Now six remain active.
The question that kept circling in my head at Holy Trinity was: why here? Why go to this extraordinary, dangerous, impractical effort to build on top of a rock pillar when you could build in the valley?
The answer, I think, is in the silence. At the top of that pillar, with nothing around but sky and stone and the occasional eagle, the world becomes very simple. There's nothing to distract you. No market, no road noise, no other people's business. Just you, the rock, and whatever you came to think about.
I'm not religious. I don't meditate regularly. But sitting on that bench at Holy Trinity for twenty minutes, I understood something about why people seek solitude that I hadn't grasped before. It's not about escaping the world. It's about hearing yourself without the world's static.
I spent two more days exploring. Great Meteoron, the largest monastery, has a museum of monastic artifacts and remarkable frescoes. 300+ steps to get there. Allow 1.5 hours. Varlaam, the second largest, has a 16th-century fresco cycle by Frangos Katelanos that stopped me in my tracks — the Last Judgment scene covers an entire wall with figures that seem to move.
But I kept coming back to Holy Trinity. On the second day, I climbed the 140 steps again, sat on the same bench, and watched the light change for an hour. The monk was tending the same garden. He nodded this time.
In the evenings, I ate in Kastraki — a stone village at the base of the pillars that's far quieter than nearby Kalabaka. Taverna Gardenia served grilled lamb and local wine for €12. The owner brought out a dessert of honey-soaked pastry that wasn't on any menu. "For the regular," she said, even though I'd been there twice.
After dinner, I walked to the Psaropetra viewpoint and watched the pillars turn from gold to pink to grey as the sun set. The monasteries, lit from within, glowed like lanterns perched on impossible pedestals.
I'd come for photos. I left with something harder to define. A sense that the monks who chose to live up there weren't crazy or masochistic — they were onto something about the relationship between difficulty, solitude, and clarity that the modern world has systematically eliminated.
Meteora isn't a photo opportunity. It's a mirror. What you see in it depends on what you bring.
For practical planning, read our Meteora tips guide and our 8 things to know before visiting. If you're traveling through Greece, Athens pairs naturally as a gateway.
