Meteora

The pillars rise abruptly from the plain like grey stone towers, and the monasteries perched on their flat tops look impossible until you are standing at the foot of one, craning upward.

The name means 'suspended in air', and in low cloud the tops really do float, cut off from the ground below by a band of mist.

Inside the monasteries the scale flips from vast to intimate: tiny courtyards, painted chapels and balconies hanging over a huge drop.

The road that loops between the rocks turns the whole area into one long series of viewpoints, each framing the monasteries against a different cliff.

The Meteora is a cluster of enormous sandstone pillars rising abruptly from the valley floor of the Pineios River, their summits crowned by monasteries that appear to float above the landscape, accessible only by centuries-old staircases and paths carved into the rock face itself.

The six remaining monasteries — five for men and one for women — were founded between the 14th and 16th centuries as retreats from political instability and Ottoman raids, their positions chosen for spiritual isolation as much as defensive security.

The Byzantine icon collection at the Great Meteoron monastery is particularly notable, with works dating from the 14th to 16th centuries, and the library of the monastery holds some 300 manuscripts and 30,000 volumes including early printed books.

The combination of dramatic geology and centuries-old monastic architecture is genuinely unlike anywhere else in Europe.

It is both a working religious site and one of Greece's great landscapes, so a visit rewards both the spiritual and the purely scenic traveller.

The sunrise and sunset light on the pillars, when the low sun rakes across the stone, is among the most photographed in the country for good reason.