Small, narrow and built in levels like a tower-house, Saint Nicholas Anapausas is the first monastery you meet climbing from Kastraki village — and the one most visitors mistakenly skip.
Its katholikon was painted in 1527 by Theophanes the Cretan, founder of the Cretan school of iconography, whose work later decorated Mount Athos. The frescoes — including a famous scene of Adam naming the animals — are among the finest of their era anywhere in Greece.
Because the rock is so narrow, the monastery grew vertically: chapels, cells and terraces stack one above the other, ending in a rooftop view of the whole Meteora forest of stone.
