Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus, the home of the gods in Greek myth, is also a real and demanding mountain: a massif of some 52 peaks rising almost straight from the Aegean coast, with its summit, Mytikas, at 2,918 metres — the highest point in Greece. Seen from the town of Litochoro, the top of the mountain shows a V between two peaks of almost equal height: Mytikas on the left and Stefani, the Throne of Zeus, on the right, a sheer tooth that is the harder climb of the two.

The mountain is formed of marine sediments laid down some 200 million years ago and later sculpted by glaciers, which left high plateaus such as the Muses' Plateau at around 2,550 metres and deep gorges like that of the Enipeas above Litochoro. It became Greece's first national park in 1938, is a biosphere reserve, and in July 2026 the wider area of Mount Olympus was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list as a mixed natural and cultural site. Its flora is exceptional: about 1,700 species and subspecies, around a quarter of all Greek flora, including 23 plants found nowhere else, among them the Ice Age relic Jankaea heldreichii. Bosnian pines grow up to about 2,750 metres, one of the highest tree lines in Europe, and the Balkan chamois is among the 32 mammal species recorded here.

Despite its fame, the summit was first reached only on 2 August 1913, a year after the region became part of Greece, when the Swiss Frédéric Boissonnas and Daniel Baud-Bovy climbed it with the Litochoro hunter Christos Kakkalos, who was the first to stand on Mytikas and later guided on the mountain for decades. Today the ascent is a long hike rather than a technical climb, except for the final scramble from Skala to Mytikas, which is exposed and not for anyone uneasy with heights. Most of the 10,000 or so people who come each year stop at Skala or Skolio. The usual route starts at Prionia, reached by road from Litochoro, and climbs to the Spilios Agapitos refuge at 2,100 metres for the night; other refuges include Petrostrouga and the Christos Kakalos hut on the Muses' Plateau. Weather changes quickly, with frequent summer storms.

The lower slopes hold their own history. The Old Monastery of Dionysios, founded in the 16th century and destroyed by German troops in 1943, sits in the Enipeas gorge and can be reached by car from Litochoro, and near the coast lies Dion, the sacred city of the ancient Macedonians dedicated to Zeus. The national park information centre in Litochoro, opened in 2016, is the best first stop for trail and refuge information.

Getting there

The base for most visits is Litochoro, on the eastern foothills; the city of Katerini is about 25 km from the massif. Litochoro, Katerini and Leptokarya all have stations on the Athens–Thessaloniki railway, and KTEL buses serve the area. The nearest airport is the small Kozani National Airport (KZI), about 49 km away, but the practical gateway is Thessaloniki's international airport; Litochoro is about 100 km from Thessaloniki.