Holy Monastery of Varlaam

The Monastery of All Saints, commonly called Varlaam, is built on an imposing rock, at the northwestern end of the Meteora stone town of Meteora and in close proximity to the Great Meteor and the Monastery of Roussanos.

Its imposing rock was inhabited for the first time, according to tradition, in the first half of the fourteenth century, six hundred years ago, by the contemporary of Saint Athanasius of Meteor, the ascetic hermit-anchorite Varlaam, from whom the monastery took its name.

The first builders of the monastery were, however, the self-brother monks Nektarios and Theophanes, sons of the prominent and wealthy Byzantine family of the Apsarades from Ioannina.