Metsovo is a beautiful town in the Pindos mountains and is often called ‘The Jewel of Epirus’. It is a Vlach town, a people who are historically nomadic shepherds who’ve lived in the region for generations and whose origins are from neighbouring Balkan countries.
It is a village that has managed to maintain its traditional stone architecture, which used to be typical for the mountainous regions of Epirus, a place once famous for its stone masons: many buildings here have the traditional schist stone roofs, rather than the tile ones.
There is a trail going through and around the town called the Ursa trail. Ursa is Vlach for bear. As speakers of french and portuguese will recognise Vlach is a romance language.
Folk Art Museum
The Metsovo Folk Art Museum is also well worth a visit. It’s is a beautiful stone house which belonged to Evangelos Averof-Tositsas, who was also foreign minister. He bequeathed it to the town. Each room is furnished as it was in the past, with wooden floors,ceilings and furniture, including beautifully carved chests and rocking cradles, and gorgeous, richly coloured woven tapestries on the walls.
Art Gallery
The Averoff Art Gallery was really interesting. It’s on three floors – ground floor and two lower floors. There is a permanent exhibition which displays a selection of 250 paintings, drawings, sculptures and engravings by the foremost Greek artists of the 19th and 20th century with a great variety of landscapes, still life and portraits, including portraits of the town’s main benefactor and his family. There was also a fascinating photography exhibition by Kostas Balafas called “Travels in Metsovo”. The black and white photographs gave a picture of life in Metsovo in the 1960’s and 70’s. Particularly striking was a wall of portraits of older men who had clearly led their lives outdoors. They were all so different from one another, mostly with very wrinkled faces, full of character
Wild Camping
We stayed a couple of nights above Metsovo in the car park at the Ski Centre which has a wonderful spring (N39.78487, E21.15880). Lots of stray/wild dogs which were not aggressive and which looked so sad we ended up giving them some tinned sardines! The first day we went into the town but the second day we went for a walk on the Ursa Trail which we could access directly from the car park. We of course managed to get lost and were ‘rescued’ by an Israeli couple who introduced us to an App called ‘AllTrails’ which I definitely recommend.