Meteora in a 360° Virtual Tour: What Actually Exists and What Is Missing

If you searched for a virtual tour of Meteora, you probably found dozens of pages selling day trips and very little you could actually open and look at.

That is not your search failing. Meteora, one of the most recognisable landscapes in Greece and a UNESCO World Heritage site, has no official virtual tour. Not from the monasteries, not from any public body.

Here is what does exist and is worth your time, what does not, and why.

The one tour worth opening

The best 360° virtual tour of Meteora available today is AirPano's. It covers all six monasteries along with two observation points. The photography is mostly aerial, and there is some interior capture for which the photographers obtained official permits. It was shot by Stas Sedov, Dmitry Moiseenko and Mike Reyfman, and published in June 2014. It is free and needs no registration.

The aerial viewpoint is not only dramatic. It is the only way to understand the geometry of the place. From the road you see monasteries on rocks. From the air you see that each monastery sits on the top of its own separate pillar with open space on every side. That is what explains the nets and rope ladders people used before the steps were cut.

Open the Meteora virtual tour

Mount Athos proves it can be done

There is a Greek example that solves exactly this problem, in a far harder setting. mountathos360.com offers 204 virtual tours across 20 monasteries, 10 sketes and 3 caves. It is free, needs no registration, and exists in Greek, English and Russian.

Its significance is larger than the numbers. Mount Athos observes the avaton, so women may not visit the monasteries. For half the people reading this, that virtual tour is not an alternative to going. It is the only way to see it. If it was done for Mount Athos, it can be done for Meteora.

Open the Mount Athos 360° virtual tour

Greek monuments we have digitised ourselves. We have not shot Meteora. We do work on exactly this: submarine Proteus S-113, destroyer Velos D-16, the Kythira Semaphore Telegraph, the Nicopolis Museum and Hagia Sophia. The Kythira Semaphore Telegraph is the closest example to what Meteora is missing: a monument almost nobody reaches in person, which now exists digitally.

If you are reading this because a monastery, an ephorate or a municipality is your responsibility, the gap is yours to close. Tell us where the site is and we will come back with a specific proposal, including what is needed on permits.