In recent years, searching for a summer holiday in Greece, I’ve turned my back on the sea. Icons of carefree fun since the 1960s, the beaches and islands now come with heat waves, forest fires, crowds and inflated prices. I’ve headed inland, up into the mountains. Here, whitewashed villages give way to stoic stone settlements, draped in silence and mist. It’s a Greece few tourists see: a highland culture that defies postcard clichés.
Few areas encapsulate this more than Zagori, in northwestern Greece — a lofty realm of cascading rivers, emerald forests, towering mountains and 46 ancient villages orbiting Mount Tymfi, at 8,192 feet one of Greece’s tallest mountains. The entire area is part of the Vikos-Aoos National Park and in 2023 was honored as a UNESCO World Heritage site.
On a trip to Zagori last September, I made Aristi Mountain Resort and Villas, in the village of Aristi, my base. The hotel features guest rooms housed in elegant stone villas, along with a swimming pool and spa. In accordance with Zagori’s strict conservation laws, everything is built using local materials.
Aristi is in western Zagori, just a 45-minute drive from Ioannina, the bustling capital of the Epirus region. A proud and traditional village, Aristi comprises a vertical cluster of tall stone mansions arranged around a central square where people gather in the evenings. There you can sit and marvel at the flat rock face of Mount Tymfi, as it turns shades of pink and yellow in the evening light. A summer storm becomes a scene of genuine theater, the lightning dancing off the mountains and the entire valley shaking to the sound of thunder.
An Autonomous Region
My first morning in Aristi, I met my guide, 58-year-old Alexis Mehtidis from Alpine Zone, a local company that specializes in rafting, canyoning and mountain biking. Our plan for the day was to hike the 7.5-mile Vikos Gorge trail, which meanders along the canyon floor between the villages of Monodendri and Vikos, while the second day would be a scenic road trip through the region.
The Vikos Gorge, which runs through the center of Zagori, is one of Europe’s great natural wonders, 20 miles long, plunging to depths of 2,953 feet and ranging in width from 300 to 3,000 feet. Exploring the gorge on foot is often a highlight of a trip to Zagori.
Alexis and I set off from Monodendri, winding our way down a cobbled path that led to the canyon floor. The 45-minute descent was the most challenging part of the trail; hiking shoes are recommended, though I managed to shimmy my way down in sneakers. After a few hours of walking along cliffs covered in shadows and rustling undergrowth, we stopped to rest near a spring, where we refilled our water bottles. Alexis had brought along some spinach-and-cheese pies and we ate them while sitting by the bed of the Voidomatis River.
“You know, I must have hiked this route 50 times over the years,” Alexis said. “And every time I see something new.”
Gregarious and boyish, with the appearance of an athletic Kojak, Alexis is one of the pioneers of Zagori hiking, having discovered the region in the 1980s when he arrived in Ioannina as a schoolteacher.
“Back then, no one came to Zagori except a few eccentrics like us,” he said. “There was no tourist infrastructure. There were no mobile phones either, so we used to call people we knew in the villages, telling them that ‘In three days’ time we’ll be there.’”
Zagori, which now has a population of 3,374, began to develop as a distinct community in the 15th century when its 46 villages negotiated an agreement with the Ottomans that kept their region autonomous in exchange for a yearly payment. Shielded by geography and diplomacy, the area blossomed into a center of medicine, philosophy and art. Greeks from Athens and Constantinople came to study or trade, and the villagers, in turn, became citizens of the wider world, doing business across Europe, Asia and Africa.
The wealth they earned was invested back into their villages. Byzantine churches, squat and muscular, were embellished with vivid frescoes. Masons worked on stitching the villages together through a network of arched bridges, cobblestone paths and monumental staircases carved into the rocks, a convergence of the natural and built environment so beguiling that it’s hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.
Deeper Into the Valley
Revitalized by water and our pies, Alexis and I continued on the path along the canyon floor, the mountains rising steeper, the dense foliage blotting out the sun, trees twizzling into the sky like giant antlers. Deep in the valley, we came upon the 18th-century Church of Panagia, its walls adorned with colorful frescoes and the scribbled memento mori of Greek soldiers holed up here during the Second World War.
A little later, we arrived at a path leading down to the springs of the Voidomatis River. I dangled my legs in the water, enjoying the numbing sensation before sliding my whole body in. There were a few others here too: a German family, a middle-aged French couple and some young bohemian Israelis.
As I eyed the series of steep, uneven switchbacks climbing toward the village of Vikos, I felt a flicker of apprehension. But the final ascent was relatively easy, just 25 minutes at most. The whole hike had lasted about seven hours, including our stops.
That evening, I popped into Salvia, the hotel’s restaurant. Typical mountain fare such as blatsaria (feta and spinach pie) and giouvetsi (orzo pasta with veal stew) were served simply with just a hint of flourish by the chef Yiannis Liokas, a veteran of some of Athens’s hippest restaurants.
I talked with a waiter, Vasilis Kirolaris, a tall teenager with a ruddy face and a shock of blond hair. “I grew up in Aristi. Winters are tough, and you must make sacrifices to live here, but we Zagorites want to live in our villages. There’s not much life in Aristi these days, but there’s always Ioannina,” he said.
Romantic and Otherworldly
The next day, I reunited with Alexis for a road trip through the region. Mysterious stone villages appeared and disappeared with each turn of the road. The mountains loomed all around us. We passed abandoned houses, old paths and forgotten shrines. The whole area was shrouded in a pall of solemn romanticism, breathtaking beauty and an atmosphere that at times felt almost sinister in its isolation.
The village of Papingo, with 184 inhabitants, and its twin, Mikro Papingo, with 39, are among the wealthiest in Zagori; the villages now have 20 hotels, up from eight in 2006. Haughty and photogenic, they perch on either side of a wide ravine. Greeks love the Papingos, perhaps the most romantic and otherworldly of the country’s mountain abodes, and the locals clearly appreciate the attention and tourism they attract.
We stopped for lunch at Lithos, the sole taverna in the village of Dilofo. It’s run by the stolid Takis Kounavos, who sat in the corner thumbing worry beads and tending to an array of multicolored cats. Founded in 540, Dilofo is among the oldest villages in Zagori, its imposing stone mansions dolled up with frilly and colorful doors and windows. The multistory school was built in 1855 when Dilofo had around 550 inhabitants. Currently being restored as a cultural center, it hasn’t seen a pupil in over 50 years.
“I was here for a funeral a few years ago,” Alexis said. “Four hundred and fifty people came from all over. People with connections to the village, who knew the deceased.” He rubbed his face. “These days the population can be counted on two hands, and only one person stays here over winter.”
Only a 40-minute drive from Ioannina (where many villagers go for the winter), Dilofo has the potential to be the next Zagori village to see a revival. While some, like Aristi and Monodendri, are basking in a sort of renaissance, with city dwellers coming for weekends, and others, like the Papingos, get by on reputation and sheer beauty, Dilofo had a rather melancholic atmosphere. This was clearly a prosperous and important place in the past.
“Things are changing,” said Alexis. “I’m seeing a lot more Greeks on the trails, plenty of foreign visitors, too.”
“My hope is that it won’t become overdeveloped,” he said, when I spoke with him recently. “Not reshaped to meet travelers’ expectations, but left in tranquillity so people can experience it as it truly is.”
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