Kastoriá

Mirrored in the glassy waters of Lake Orestiada, Kastoria unfolds as a Byzantine tapestry of more than 70 churches, their frescoed interiors preserving some of the most exquisite post-Byzantine art in the Balkans. The town’s wealth — once derived from the fur trade — erected grand mansions (archontika) with projecting wooden sachnisia, now museums of Ottoman-era domestic life. A lakeside promenade traces the peninsula to the 11th-century Panagia Mavriotissa, where saints gaze from cobalt backgrounds, while the Dragon’s Cave (Spilia tou Drakou) reveals subterranean lakes and stalactites just beyond the old quarter.

Nestled in a tranquil corner of northwestern Greece, the Prespes Lakes — Great and Small Prespa — straddle the borders of Greece, Albania, and North Macedonia, forming a wetland of international importance. This UNESCO-recognized biosphere reserve is a haven for over 260 bird species, including the world’s largest breeding colony of Dalmatian pelicans. The landscape feels suspended in time: reed-fringed shores give way to traditional stone villages like Agios Germanos, where Byzantine churches adorned with 14th-century frescoes hide in plane-tree squares. A boat ride to the islet of Agios Achilleios reveals the ruins of a basilica built by Tsar Samuel of Bulgaria, while the silence is broken only by the call of a heron or the splash of a surfacing carp. It is a place for slow travel — hiking the lakeshore trails, sampling local giant beans (gigantes) in a taverna, and watching the light turn the water to liquid gold at dusk.