Monastery of St. Dimitrios, Orthodox monastery ruins in Meteora, Greece

The Monastery of St. Dimitrios is a ruined Greek Orthodox monastery on Dimitrios Rock in the Meteora complex at Kalabaka, Thessaly. Only ruins remain of the former monastery, and the Ypapantis Monastery stands on the same rock, below the ruins of St. Dimitrios.

The monastery was destroyed in 1809 by Ali Pasha Tepelena, the Albanian Ottoman pasha, because Greek insurgents led by the klepht Thymios Vlachavas were hiding at the site. Its ruins remain on Dimitrios Rock, where the Ypapantis Monastery stands below it.

The monastery shared Dimitrios Rock with Ypapantis Monastery, which stands lower on the same rock. The name Dimitrios refers to Saint Demetrius, a widely venerated martyr. The dedication linked the community to a saint honoured across the Orthodox world, and the rock-top position kept the monks apart from the settlements of the Thessalian plain below.

A trail from the unpaved road below leads to the base of Dimitrios Rock; from there the ruins are reached only by climbing the rock itself. Ypapantis Monastery stands on the same rock, below St. Dimitrios. There are no carved stone steps or marked stairways, so the final climb is unsecured rock.

The Ypapantis Monastery stands on the same Dimitrios Rock, directly below the ruins of St. Dimitrios. The two foundations share one massif, so a single climb brings a visitor past both. The 2006 study by Theocharis Provatakis on Meteora's monasteries and monasticism cites the site on page 99.