Overview
The town itself was burned by German troops in 1943 and rebuilt plainly, so the older fabric is concentrated in the upper streets near the church of the Dormition of the Virgin. That church reuses columns from an early basilica, keeps sixteenth-century frescoes, and places its ambo centrally in a way that survives almost nowhere else in the country. Kastraki, the village fifteen minutes further on, sits closer under the rocks and is quieter.
Highlights
Sleep here rather than day-tripping from Athens; the monasteries open early and close in the early afternoon. The Dormition church is a ten-minute walk uphill from the main square and is usually empty. Trains from Athens run to Kalabaka in about five hours, and the hiking path from the town to Great Meteoron takes about ninety minutes uphill.