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Mount Olympus
Greece's highest peak, the mythic home of the gods
Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, a craggy limestone massif rising to 2,918 metres at its loftiest summit, Mytikas, near the Aegean coast in the country's north. In Greek mythology its cloud-wrapped peaks were the home of the Twelve Olympian gods, the throne of Zeus himself, and the mountain has carried that sacred aura for nearly three thousand years. Steep gorges, sheer rock walls, and a crown of summits that hold snow into summer give it a grandeur to match its legend.
Olympus is a block of limestone uplifted and deeply eroded into a cluster of peaks - Mytikas, Stefani, and Skolio among them - separated by precipitous ravines, the highest of them bare rock that catches the first snows of autumn. Its sharp rise from near sea level creates a remarkable range of climates and an exceptional richness of plant life, with hundreds of species and many endemics cloaking its slopes from Mediterranean forest to alpine meadow. The summit area was long considered unclimbable and held in superstitious awe.
The highest summit, Mytikas, was not reached until 1913, by the Swiss climbers Frederic Boissonnas and Daniel Baud-Bovy with the Greek guide Christos Kakalos. The mountain and its surroundings form Greece's first national park, established in 1938, and a UNESCO biosphere reserve, protecting both its biodiversity and the rich web of myth attached to it. Trails climb from the town of Litochoro through the Enipeas gorge, drawing hikers who follow, in a sense, the old path toward the dwelling of the gods.