Holy Monastery of Megalo Meteoro

The foundation of the Monastery of the Great Meteor or Metamorphosis was the starting point of organised Meteoric monasticism. This monastery is the oldest, largest and most formal of the existing Meteoric monasteries, as its name “Megalo Meteoro” or simply “Meteoro” indicates. Perched on its imposing rock, it occupies a dominant position among the monastic complex of Meteora.

It was founded shortly before the middle of the fourteenth century by Hosios Athanasios the Meteorite, who was the first founder of the monastery and organizer of a systematic monastic community.

The successor of Athanasius and the second builder of the monastery was the monk Saint Ioasaph, former King John of Uresis (Uros) Angelos Komnenos Duke of Palaiologos. Athanasius, while he was still alive, appointed him his successor.

Today, climbing the carved staircase, just before the entrance of the monastery and to the left, you can see the ascetic monastery of Saint Athanasius, in the natural cavity of the rock, formed into a rudimentary living space and the necessary temple. There, according to tradition, originally, once he had climbed Platys Lithos, the hermit monk practiced alone, before building a temple and cells on the plateau of the rock to serve the monks who began to flock there at an early stage.

In the middle of the sixteenth century the monastery flourished and prospered.