The fertile plain of Thessaly in central Greece is surrounded by Mounts Pindus, Olympus, Pelion, Othrys, Ossa and Agrapha. The River Pinios, coming down from the western slopes of Pindus, cuts Thessaly in two, passes through the valley of Temple and meets the sea.
Thessaly is the source of many of the myths of Greece we are all familiar with. Olympus, home of the immortal gods and land of the Centaurs, is only one of the many areas inhabited since Paleolithic times to the present day. The people of Thessaly took part in the Trojan war, with many ships and the hero Achilles as their leader.
On the western edge of the plain of Thessaly, at the base of the Pindus range is the site of 24 perpendicular rocks on which about 600 years ago Byzantine monks chose to build Meteora, their monastic community. How the monasteries were built on the top of these virtually inaccessible rocks is a subject of fascination for pilgrims and visitors.
The Pindus is a vast range extending from the Greek border with Albania east into Macedonia, west to the Ionian Sea and to the south beyond Metsovo in Western Macedonia. In these mountains, wolves and bears still live, but are endangered.
This webpage created by Elizabeth Van Rij