AGIA TRIADA MONASTERY METEORON

Overlooking Kalambaka, the male monastery of the Holy Trinity of Meteora (Ιερά Μονή Αγίας Τριάδας Μετεώρων/Iera Moni Agias Triadas Meteoron) sits on a 300-meter-high peak completely isolated from the neighboring columns and hills. This makes it one of the Meteora's most difficult monasteries to reach (145 steps). Above all, it's the most photogenic. Cinematic, even: it was the setting for impressive scenes in the Tintin (1961) and James Bond (1981) sagas. But it's come a long way. Founded between 1458 and 1475 on a site previously occupied by hermits, it suffered extensive damage during the Second World War. Writers Patrick Leigh Fermor and Jacques Lacarrière described the devastated monastery as "open to all winds" in the decades that followed. Finally restored and reoccupied by monks since the late 1970s, it's worth a visit for its two churches. The first is the Agios Ioannis Prodromos (St. John the Baptist) chapel. Circular in shape and carved out of the rock, probably by hermits, it is adorned with fairly recent frescoes (1862). The catholicon features a ^15th-century nave repainted by monks in 1741. But its narthex, added in the ^17th century, features older frescoes dating from 1692. On the other hand, few valuable icons remain: 26 of them escaped looting and are now housed in the Varlaam monastery.