What UNESCO recognised

The inscription came on 19 September 2023, at the 45th session of the World Heritage Committee in Riyadh, under the name Zagori Cultural Landscape.

It was Greece's nineteenth entry on the list and the first under the category of cultural landscape — meaning the recognition is not of a single monument but of the whole relationship between the villages, the paths that link them and the mountains around them.

What the committee recognised specifically was the architecture: the houses, the old schools, the churches and the bridges, and the fact that they survive as a living system rather than a preserved museum. Eighteen villages form the protected core; the rest lie in the buffer zone.

The bridges

The stone bridges are the signature of Zagori. They were built between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries by travelling master builders from the mountain villages of Epirus, paid for by wealthy emigrants who had made money abroad and sent it home.

The best known are the three-arched Kalogeriko — also called Plakidas — and the single-arched Kokkori bridge, both over tributaries of the Voidomatis. Dozens more survive across the region, and several old paths still cross them.

Museums and monasteries

The Monastery of Agia Paraskevi at Monodendri stands on the very edge of the Vikos Gorge, with a walkway cut into the cliff behind it.

The Rizarios Exhibition Centre at Monodendri and the Lazaridis Folklore Museum at Koukouli cover the crafts, the costume and the social history of the region.

Forty-six villages, and they differ from each other more than a visitor expects.

Papingo — Megalo and Mikro Papingo — sits below the sheer limestone towers of the Astraka and is the busiest.

Monodendri is on the lip of the Vikos Gorge, with the monastery and the main viewpoint at Oxya.

Tsepelovo and Kapesovo are higher and quieter, with mansion houses and old schools that show what the money from emigration built.

Koukouli, Dilofo, Vitsa and Vradeto are the smallest. Vradeto is reached by the Skala, a stepped stone path of about 1,200 metres cut in switchbacks up a cliff — until 1973 it was the only way in.

The villages are still lived in, and most have one taverna and a handful of guesthouses in restored houses.

The Vikos Gorge

The Vikos Gorge runs about twelve kilometres between Monodendri and the Papingo villages, and it is 990 metres deep. Measured against its width it is among the deepest gorges anywhere.

You can look into it from Oxya and from Beloi, both short walks from the road. Crossing it on foot takes six to seven hours, from Monodendri down to the riverbed and up to Papingo, and it is a serious day — there is no water on the route and no way out in the middle.

The rivers

The Voidomatis rises inside the gorge and runs out of it clear enough to see the bottom at any depth. It is one of the coldest rivers in Greece and one of the cleanest in Europe, and the stretch from Klidonia is run commercially for rafting and kayaking.

The Aoos cuts its own gorge on the northern side of Tymfi.

Tymfi and the dragon lake

Above Papingo, Mount Tymfi rises to over 2,400 metres. The path up to the Astraka refuge takes about three hours, and from there another hour reaches Drakolimni — the dragon lake — an alpine tarn just below the ridge, with the Aoos gorge falling away behind it.

Both the Vikos–Aoos and the northern Pindus are national parks, and the forests hold bear, wolf and chamois.

Epirus is pie country, and Zagori is the middle of it. Pies here are made with hand-rolled pastry and whatever the season gives — wild greens, leeks, pumpkin, cheese — and every village makes them slightly differently.

The dairy is the other constant: feta, hard sheep's cheeses and thick yoghurt from flocks that graze high.

Mountain tea, wild herbs and honey come off the same slopes, and the meat is lamb, goat and, in winter, game.