Della Dora, Setting and Bluring Boundaries PDF

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp.
951974, 2012
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SETTING AND BLURRING

BOUNDARIES: PILGRIMS, TOURISTS,
AND LANDSCAPE IN MOUNT ATHOS
AND METEORA
Veronica della Dora
University of Bristol, UK
Abstract: The peninsula of Mount Athos and the rocky complex of Meteora are the two
largest monastic communities in Greece and among the main holy landmarks in the Ortho-
dox Christian world. Both are UNESCO sites and, besides their unique cultural and spiritual
heritage, they also host the most stunning worlds sceneries. As such, Mount Athos and Mete-
ora constitute powerful magnets for vast numbers of pilgrims and tourists. Yet, differences in
their history and in the management of tourist flows make them different too. This article
approaches the two sites through the lens of landscape, destabilizing boundaries between
the sacred and the secular, the sublime and the prosaic, tourism and pilgrimage. Keywords:
Mount Athos, Meteora, landscape, pilgrimage, heritage, wilderness. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All
rights reserved.
Great and wonderful are Thy deeds, O God the Almighty!

Who shall not fear and glorify Thy name, O God?
(Rev. 15: 34)
In paradise for the first time.
(Italian visitor to Mount Athos)
INTRODUCTION
Wilderness and the holy share two main similarities. Firstly, they both
evoke separation from the ordinary against which they are defined.
Secondly, taken literally, they both cause bewilderment, wonder,
displacement. Wilderness is psychological as much as it is geographical:
it can be a state of mind and a state of the land (Lane, 1998). Yet, for
Veronica della Dora is Senior Lecturer in Geographies of Knowledge at the School of

Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol (School of Geographical Sciences, University
Road, Bristol BS8 1SS, UK. Email <veronica.delladora@bristol.ac.uk>). She is the author of
Imagining Mount Athos: Visions of a Holy Place from Homer to World War II (University of Virginia
Press, 2011) and co-editor with Denis Cosgrove of High Places: Cultural Geographies of
Mountains, Ice, and Science (IB Tauris, 2008). Her research interests and publications span
cultural and historical geography, history of cartography, Byzantine and post-Byzantine
studies, and science studies.
951
952 V. della Dora / Annals of Tourism Research 39 (2012) 951974
many today the term wilderness evokes nostalgia, compassion, per-

haps even a sense of moral guilt, rather than threat or mystery. In
the western geographical imagination wilderness is no longer an un-
bound terra incognita, but, rather, a precarious archipelago to be safe-
guarded from the evils of modernity. And so are holy sites. As with
wilderness, these are often envisaged as islands, which is, as spiritual
refuges we can turn for escape from our too-muchness (Cronon,
1995, p. 69), or simply as fragile ecosystems surrounded by the
encroaching desert of secularism and banalization.
The word holy derives from the Germanic halig, which means some-
thing that must be preserved whole or intact; something that, like wil-
derness, cannot be transgressed or violated. In Greek, however, holy
is less about conscious preservation and more about unmediated re-
sponse: a cio1 comes from the verb a folai, which means simply to
stand in awe, or in fear (Mpalatsoukas, 2009). In the Judeo-Christian
tradition God usually chose to speak through charismatic prophets
and holy men and through equally charismatic places set apart from
the inhabited world: mountains, caves, desertsin other words,
through wilderness (Williams, 1958). Today many of these places have
become important shrines and pilgrimage destinations; often they
have also become popular tourist attractions. More often, however,
they have become points in which these two categories blur. After
all, both pilgrims and tourists are after an extra-ordinary experience
(Cohen, 1979; Dicks, 2003; Turner & Turner, 1978).
Over the past two decades a number of scholars across the social sci-
ences and the humanities have increasingly problematized rigid
dichotomies such as human/nature, urban/wilderness, sacred/pro-
fane (see, for example, Cronon, 1995; Eade & Sallnow, 1991; Latour,
1993). In the light (or as part) of these debates, pilgrimage and tour-
ism have also been object of much critical rethinking (Badone & Rose-
man, 2004; Rinschede, 1992). Cultural anthropologists and tourism
scholars have suggested a continuum, rather than a binary opposition
between these two categories, sometimes destabilizing the semantic
meaning of pilgrimage itself (see, for example, Cohen, 1979; Cohen,
1992; Collins-Kreiner, 2009; Collins-Kreiner, 2010; Reader, 1993;
Smith, 1992; Timothy & Olsen, 2006).
Depending on the authors degree of emphasis on social construc-
tion, these studies have been usually caught between two standard spa-
tial categories: place and space, which is, the shrine and pilgrims (or
tourists) ritualized performances (Coleman & Crang, 2002; Coleman
& Eade, 2004) and mobilities (Bajc, Coleman, & Eade, 2007; Morinis,
1992). While social scientists have been particularly interested in the
articulation of space through movement and social practices, theolo-
gians and historians have usually continued to focus on shrines as places
(at once material and symbolic) and on their ontological power, or
what Preston (1992) calls spiritual magnetism, which is, their ability
to facilitate the contact with the transcendent and the creation of com-
munitas (Inge, 2003). Yet, what surrounds the shrines and how it affects
both the shrines status and visitors experience has usually gone lar-
gely understudied, if not ignored.
V. della Dora / Annals of Tourism Research 39 (2012) 951974 953
This article seeks to further these debates through the lens of land-
scape. The term landscape refers both to a framed view of specific sites
and the scenic character of whole regions (Cosgrove, 2006). It is both a
socio-economic product, and a way of seeing shaped by culturally spe-
cific pictorial conventions (Cosgrove, 1985; Gold & Revill, 2004).While
some recent studies do refer to pilgrims appreciation of the natural
environment at pilgrimage sites (including Orthodox shrines), land-
scape usually remains a contour, or rather, a backdrop to pilgrims
experience (see Andriotis, 2009; Coleman & Elsner, 2003; Gothoni,
1998). At the same time, extant studies discussing the role of nature
(and landscape) in shaping spiritual experiences focus on tourists mov-
ing outside of the frame of institutionalized religion (Digance, 2003;
Sharpley & Jepson, 2011).
Here I would like to move landscape to the fore and focus explicitly
on its agency in the context of religious pilgrimage sites. In other
words, I would like to put landscape to task (Rose, 2002). Not only
does landscape contribute to the shaping of the pilgrims experience,
I argue, but it can also be a primary attractant for other categories of
visitors (I use the generic term visitor to encompass the wide range
of motivations behind a journey to a sacred site). As such, it may often
dramatically increase the pressure on the shrine by non-pilgrims and in
turn impact pilgrims experience and their own experience too, be-
sides the lives of permanent residents (Digance, 2003).
The article contributes to recent studies on Orthodox pilgrimage
shrines (Andriotis, 2009; Gothoni, 1998; Shackley, 2001; Rahkala,
2010; Dubisch, 1995; Kotsi, 1999) from a cultural geography perspec-
tive. In particular, it focuses on the peninsula of Mount Athos and
the rocky complex of Meteora, the two largest and most iconic monas-
tic communities and major pilgrimage centres in Greece, also renown
for their natural beauty and breathtaking sceneries. As the article will
show, the two sites share many similarities and are bound together
by the same spiritual tradition. Yet, historical circumstances and the
different strategies their permanent residents have adopted to regulate
visitors flowsself-containment through spatial boundaries and access
restricted by visitors numbers (and gender) in the case of Athos versus
mass access restricted by temporal boundaries in the case of Meteora
make these sites very different case studies.
As Myra Shackley notes, when sacred sites (and in this case the land-
scape in which they are embedded) become visitor attractions, opera-
tion management becomes essential, and ultimately it is the task of
sacred sites to manage the mysterious and reach for the sublime, while
coping with the prosaic (2001, p. xviii). Yet, studies on holy sites man-
agement usually focus on localized congested sites, such as individual
shrines and monasteries (Carlisle, 1998; Shackley, 1998). How are
these policies implemented over extended areas such as Athos and
Meteora? How do they impact the experience of pilgrims and tourists?
Can we trace stark boundaries between these two categories of visitors?
And ultimately, can we separate the monastery experience from the
landscape experience?
The article is structured into five substantive sections. Having briefly

outlined the historical and insular similarities between the two sites
and the methodological approaches adopted in this study, the third
part of the article addresses boundary-making strategies on Athos
and Meteora from both the perspective of visitors and stakeholders.
Yet, I argue, physical boundaries are no less permeable than concep-
tual boundaries. The following two sections show how, besides being
a powerful attractant to both sites, landscape also contributes to probl-
ematize standard categorizations of visitors (such as pilgrim versus
tourist), showing instead intriguing overlaps and continuities.
MOUNT ATHOS AND METEORA AS MONASTIC ISLANDS

In the Christian East famous shrines are usually surrounded by stun-
ning, even sublime, natural sceneries of which they are deemed to be a
harmonious part (Mpalatsoukas, 2009, p. 187188). At the same time,
they are also built and conceptualized as islands, which is, as spiritual
(and often also naturalistic) oases set apart from the rest of the world
through well-defined boundaries. These can range from the microscale
of a monastery to entire regions. They can be fixed, as is the case of the
massive walls of Saint Catherine monastery in the Sinai peninsula built
by Justinian in the sixth century, but they can also be fluid. In Ethiopia,
for example, the sacred groves surrounding Orthodox churches are
the last surviving forested areas in the country. Recent conservation
projects include the funding of perimeter delineation through fences
to prevent further shrinkage from human activities and protect these
vulnerable areas and their unique biodiversity (http://canopy-
meg.com/wp/saving-the-forests-of-ethiopia-one-church-at-a-time/ (re-
trieved April 3, 2011)).
Boundaries, however, are not always manmade. They can also be nat-
ural. Such is the case of Mount Athos and Meteora. The former is a
fifty-kilometre mountain peninsula in the North Aegean hosting twenty
Byzantine monasteries and a population of over 2000 monks (Figure 1);
the latter is a rocky complex located on the north-western edge of the
Thessalian plain hosting six still functioning monastic foundations
inhabited by much more modest numbers (two nunneries of respec-
tively 33 and 16 sisters and four monasteries with numbers of monks
ranging from six to two) (Figure 2). Mount Athos is set apart from
the rest of the world by the natural perimeter of its coastline and a land
border located in proximity of its two-kilometre isthmus; Meteora by
the altitude of its rocks, reaching up to over five hundred metres.
These two sites share similarities. A majestic cone rising from the sea
for 2033 m and a stunning forest of giant limestone pillars towering
over a flat plain, Athos and Meteora possess the surprise element of
great holy landmarks (Figures 3 and 4). They signal interruptions on
the visual horizon of those who approach them, forming prominent
axes mundi (Eliade, 1959). The two sites also share a similar spiritual
tradition and developmental pattern. Unlike Mount Sinai or Saint
Johns cave on Patmos, they are not sites of biblical theophanies, but
Figure 1. Map of Mount Athos (Source: della Dora, V. Imagining Mount

Athos: visions of a holy place from Homer to World War II. Charlottesville:
University of Virginia Press, 2011)
places which have been sanctified over the centuries through the pres-
ence of ascetics.
Mount Athos is the most ancient Christian holy mountain in Greece.
In the ninth century its geographical isolationThessalonica, the clos-
est urban centre, lie approximately 100 kilometres awayattracted her-
mits escaping iconoclastic persecution and the Arab invasion of the
Egyptian desert, or simply looking for a quieter place to spend their
lives. In 963 Saint Athanasius established the first coenobitic founda-
tion on the peninsula (the still-extant monastery of Great Lavra) on
one of its most inaccessible spots. Other nineteen monasteries followed
throughout the following five centuries (Speake, 2002).
The history of Meteora is bound to that of Athos. The founder of its
first coenobitic monastery (Great Meteoron), who was also called
Athanasius, came from the holy peninsula, which he was forced to
abandon after repeated pirate incursions in the mid fourteenth cen-
tury. As with Athos, Meteoras spiritual landscape was carved out of
its unique geology through ascetic discourse and practice. At its peak
of prosperity, Meteoras rocky pinnacles and caves hosted no less than
twenty-three monasteries.
While Athonite monasteries were protected by the sea and their for-
tified walls, Meteorite foundations were naturally protected by their
height. They were islands suspended in the air, as the term Meteora
(the suspended) suggests. Until steps were carved in the rock in 1897
Figure 2. Map of Meteora (source: http://www.planetware.com/i/map/GR/

monasteries-meteora-map.jpg)
and a road was built in 1922, the only way to access the monasteries was
through a net hauled by a rope. But, as Donald Nicol observed, com-
munication with the world was something the Byzantine monk was sup-
posed to regard simply as a regrettable necessity (1963, p. 16).
Wilderness and isolation were indeed pre-requisites for the spiritual
Figure 3. View of the western slope of Mount Athos from the sea (photograph
by Monk Apollo Docheiarite)
Figure 4. View of Meteora from ground level (photograph by the author)
hesychia (quietness) sought after by hermits and monks, as it continues

to be the case.
To maximise hesychia and reduce worldly temptations, in the elev-
enth century the monks of Athos made their peninsula avaton, which
is an area banned to the opposite sex. The Meteorite fathers did the
same. Yet, while on Athos the rule has been strictly enforced to our
days, in Meteora the ban was lifted after World War II. In the 1970s
two deserted monasteries became nunneries. Today up to a thousand
international and domestic visitors daily make their way up to the Holy
Rocks.
RESEARCH METHODS AND APPROACHES

As mentioned above, the dedifferentiation between pilgrims and
tourists has increasingly penetrated interdisciplinary scholarship (Col-
lins-Kreiner, 2009). Since Dean MacCannell controversially claimed
that tourism is the pilgrimage of modern man (MacCannell, 1973,
p. 593), ever increasing attention has been devoted to the spiritual
dimensions of tourism, including pilgrims and tourists shared quest
for authenticity (Cohen, 1979; Timothy & Olsen, 2006; Vukonic,
2002) and, more recently, the re-evaluation of tourism as a deeply sub-
jective regenerative experience fostering the connection between self
and world outside of the framework of institutionalized religion (Di-
gance, 2003; Sharpley & Jepson, 2011).
As Timothy and Olsen observe, increasing feelings of dislocation and
rootlessness in contemporary western societies have been paralleled by
a fragmentation and privatization of religion and the proliferation of
new (or alternative) forms of spiritual quest (2006, p. 4; see also Hol-
loway & Valins, 2002). These include tourism in the existential mode,
which is a form of travel committed to an elective spiritual centre re-
moved from the world of ones everyday life (Cohen, 1979). This can
be a geographically and culturally distant location, as well as an out-
door natural otherness offering an effective counterpoint to excursion-
ists urban lives, such as Lake District in England (Sharpley & Jepson,
2011).
No matter where, tourist journeys, Justine Digance suggests, are akin
to pilgrimage because they represent the non-ordinary and sacred
interludes which make life worth living, thus producing a sense of
spiritual fulfilment (2003, p. 145). Rigid dichotomies between pilgrim-
age and tourism or pilgrims and tourists seem therefore no longer ten-
able in the shifting world of postmodern travel (Badone & Roseman,
2004, p. 2). The goal of this project was to investigate the role of land-
scape and site management in setting and blurring these very
dichotomies.
This article is itself written from an outsider-insiders perspective,
that of a cultural geographer conducting fieldwork in Meteora and a
female Orthodox faithful who over the years has developed strong
spiritual ties with one of the Mount Athos monasteries without, of
course, having ever visited the peninsula. In a sense, my positionality
and the methodological challenges encountered in this research
blurred the boundaries of these sacred sites.
I visited Meteora three times. The first visit occurred several years
ago at the peak of high season. While this visit was undertaken for
non-research purposes (as part of a one-day organized excursion to
Thessaly) and no formal preparations were made, it acquainted me
with the area and with the degree of tourist congestion monasteries
can experience over the summer. The second visit took place in spring
2010, the week after Orthodox Easter. This is a time privileged by
Orthodox pilgrims and popular among other visitors since it also nor-
mally falls in the western Easter vacation period. My third visit was
undertaken in November, a time of the year in which both tourist
and pilgrim flows are remarkably thinner, and, as with the previous vis-
it, it lasted one week. All together, the three visits provided a dia-
chronic perspective on the impact of tourist flows on the sites, as
well as on the mutable presence of the natural landscape through
three different seasons (Nicol, 1963, p. 3).
The three visits, however, also differed in terms of my own position-
ality and methodologies: the first visit occurred long before my conver-
sion to Orthodoxy, as a (non-religious) tourist; in my second visit I was
a participant observer who had the fortune to spend four nights in one
of the monastic foundations and take part to their liturgical life, thus
experiencing Meteora outside visitors hours. This visit involved close
interaction with the permanent residents of my hosting nunnery and
with Greek pilgrims. The last visit was devoted to the collection of inter-
national visitors impressions by means of semi-structured interviews
and conversations (Andriotis, 2009). These normally occurred on
the premises of the six monasteries during opening hours, and in
the guesthouse in the valley where I was based.
Since most of the visitors were usually pressed by time (most of them
would spend one or maximum two days in Meteora), I also used open
questionnaires printed on pre-stamped postcards which informants
could complete at their leisure on their way home and mail from
any part of Greece. They were asked to comment on their experience
of Meteora, with specific reference to the role of landscape. Besides
(optional) information such as age, gender, nationality and religious
affiliation, the postcards also included the question: Do you consider
yourself a pilgrim or a tourist and why? Of 150 postcards, 42 were re-
turned, including participants from fifteen countries and five religious
affiliations (Orthodox Christian, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish,
Buddhist) and non-affiliations (atheist and agnostic).
Another source I originally planned to access to gain insights into
lived experiences was visitors books (Andriotis, 2009; Noy, 2008).
Yet, much too my dismay, such books are not kept by Meteoras mon-
asteries because of the large volume of visitors. They are on Mount
Athos though, and the fathers of one of the monasteries were generous
to scan their last book and e.mail it to me. Interviews with some of
them (which were conducted in their female dependency outside of
Athos) provided me with an insiders perspective (though, of course,
this cannot be generalized to the entire population of the peninsula).
Travel blogs provided another valuable source of information in some
ways akin to visitor books, with the benefit of further space and images.
Finally, twelve collections of digital photographs taken by monks and
pilgrims to Athos (some of whom I interviewed before and after their
pilgrimage) provided a further insight into their experience of Athos
and the place of landscape in that experience (Markwell, 1997).
SETTING BOUNDARIES
Meteora and Mount Athos share a common spiritual tradition and
are both enlisted as UNESCO heritage sites based on cultural and
naturalistic criteria (http://whc.unesco.org (retrieved December 20,

2010)). Yet, as I mentioned, their recent history, juridical status, and,
not least, management of tourist flows, make the two sites different
too. Mount Athos has uninterruptedly retained its special autonomous
status as a self-governed community for the past thousand years. By
contrast, Meteora has been more permeable to the vicissitudes of time
and experienced extended periods of abandonment and decline, as
well as serious material damage, including devastating bombings dur-
ing the Second World War and plundering during the Greek Civil
War (19461949), when the monasteries remained uninhabited. Un-
like Athos, today only six of Meteoras twenty-three monasteries survive.
While access to Mount Athos is strictly regulateda maximum of 120
Orthodox Christian visitors are allowed per day, whereas foreigners of
other religious affiliations are limited to 10 per day (excluding pilgrims
invited directly by the monasteries)and requires a special permission
(diamoneterion), since the 1950s Meteora has increasingly opened to
mass tourism. Access to Athos is possible only from ferry from the bor-
der town of Ouranoupoli. The land border is closed and patrolled by
the local police, making the peninsula an island in effect. The monas-
teries of Meteora, by contrast, are easily reachable through asphalted
roads even by two-floor coaches and, as I mentioned, during high sea-
son receive up to a thousand visitors per day.
On Athos there are no hotels (except for a small guesthouse in the
capital, Karyes) and visitors are hosted by the monasteries for free (usu-
ally one night in a different monastery up to three days, which is the
limit of standard diamoniteria). Philoxenia (hospitality) is deemed by
Athonite monks an important part of their tradition. This, however,
is generally not possible in Meteora because of space limitations. Here
monasteries are remarkably smaller than their Athonite counterparts,
as size is constrained by the rocks on which they are built. While Athos
monasteries are equipped with guesthouses able to host up to hun-
dreds pilgrims (as it normally happens during religious festivals), the
two Meteora nunneries have only one or two spare cells and struggle
to accommodate even new recruits. Visitors to Meteora thus usually so-
journ in the villages of Kalambaka and Kastraki, at the feet of the rocks.
Like Ouranoupoli, the economy of these frontier villages is largely
shaped by tourism. In Kalambaka, a village of 12,000, there are over 35
hotels and guesthouses, complemented by souvenir shops, bars and
restaurants. Visitors are admitted to the monasteries during fixed times
of the day (usually extended during high season). Non-Greek visitors
are charged a symbolic entry fee regardless of their status (though, I
suspect, pilgrims and Greek-speaking foreigners are often spared, as
I was in all instances). Faithful (usually from the valley) are allowed
to take part to Sunday Divine Liturgy before visitors hours.
While visitors to Athos have to adapt to monastic routine and are
usually positively struck by the quietness of the monasteries (Andriotis,
2009), the occasional religious visitor to Meteora typically spends less
than one hour in each monastery and tends to deplore their over-
crowding during the high season. Typical responses vary from disap-
pointment to acceptance and consolation in the landscape:
My experience was really not so good. I liked the nature but wonder
how monks can live their life there. There are too many tourists
(Greek Orthodox, M 2635).
I enjoyed the characteristic nature and the architectural part. At Var-
laam I found a well-preserved life; but I also found that in other mon-
asteries the tourist invasion causes a deviation from the typical
patterns of monastic life (Italian Benedictine monk, M 4655).
The landscape of Meteora is hard at first to even grasp. The buildings
themselves and the now saints that dedicated their lives to this are
amazing, but, because of the tourist nature of how the monasteries
of Meteora are set up, my pilgrimage was most different from other
monastery visits in the US (American Greek-Orthodox, M 4655).
Meteoras landscape (or Meteora-as-a-landscape) embeds a funda-
mental paradox. As suggested by many of my informants, landscape
alone is a main attractant of mass tourism. Mass tourism, in turn, is
the main source of income for the monasteries; yet at the same time
it is perceived by visitors as altering, if not compromising, spiritual
experience. A local villager ascribed the low numbers of monks in
Meteora largely to tourism and contrasted them to Athos flourishing
population (Speake, 2002). One-day pilgrims likewise perceived mass
tourism as a negative museifying factor somehow depriving place of
its spiritual magnetism. As opposed to pristine, non-commodified
Athos, they seemed to envisage Meteora as a beautiful yet contami-
nated island.
From an insiders perspective, however, tourism to Meteora does not
seem to be as problematic as perceived from the outside: visitors are
allowed only to certain parts of the monasteries and only for a few
hours a day. While the whole peninsula of Athos is regarded as a single
large monastery subject to the avaton and the same regulation policies,
in Meteora visitors flows are regulated through temporal and spatial
micro-boundaries (Figure 5). During opening times, designated lay-
people deal with visitors while most of the nuns and monks simply
move to a different part of the monastery which is fenced off to the
public. The avaton is thus enforced at a microscale. After visitors
hours, silence falls once again, until the following morning.
To some visitors, boundaries can feel constraining. I was really frus-
trated with the time constraints of the group tour, as well as with phys-
ical restrictions of what I could see/do, an American art historian said.
Yet, the nuns regard streaming visitors flows an effective strategy, as it
allows them to conduct religious services (before and after visitors
hours) totally undisturbed, as opposed to Athos, where the monks have
to deal with their few visitors constantly: in the church (often behaving
inappropriately), in the refectory (complaining about food!), and on
several other occasions throughout the day. Many Greek and foreign
visitors are not necessarily led to Athos by spiritual motivations. Some
just take their stay there as a cheap vacation destination, and this is
attested by the variety of signs and reminders of decorous behaviour
on the peninsula. Its a lot of work for the monks, a Meteorite nun
Figure 5. Setting temporal boundaries at Great Meteoron (photograph by the

author)
suggested. Here [in Meteora], on the contrary, tourists just walk by.
Their attention is split between the monasteries and the landscape.
The Athonite monks I interviewed, however, insisted on the impor-
tance of involving visitors in their liturgical life:
Meteora has its unique nature and tourism. We have spirituality. Peo-
ple may come for all sorts of purposes, but most of them leave [Athos]
transformed. Here they get something different. People who have not
confessed themselves for entire years would ask to be confessed here.
Comments in the visitor book seem to confirm the importance of
participation to monastic liturgical life. It strengthened our Christian
faith and personal spirituality, a group of Spanish Roman Catholic vis-
itors wrote. An American visitor in his late fifties defined Athos emo-
tional: What really hit was entering the monasterys church during
a service: the atmosphere, the chants, the incense . . . I burst in tears.
I could not speak for the first two days without crying. On his return
home he would still listen to a CD purchased at the monastery:
I have been listening to the CD in my car. It makes me feel like I am
still in Mt. Athos. I disconnect from this crazy world . . .
THE LANDSCAPE EXPERIENCE

The rocky landscape of Meteora and the forested slopes of Athos are
more than a backdrop for their permanent inhabitants. They seem to
permeate every aspect of daily life and are also powerful identity mark-
ers for both communities (della Dora, 2011a, 2011b, forthcoming). As
with any discourse on identity, in Athos and Meteora representations of
nature account for distinctiveness and, as travelling objects, they in
turn feed into construction of place both inside and outside of their
Figure 6. View of Docheiariou Monastery from the boat (photograph by the

author)
physical boundaries (Bell & Lyall, 2004, p. 23; Coleman & Crang, 2004,
p. 4).
One finds Athos coastal profiles on incense boxes, on hand-carved
crosses, on the frontispiece of photographic albums, as well as on cop-
ies of constitutional charters and on prints hanging in monasteries
halls (Figure 7). Likewise, views of Meteoras rocks populate contempo-
rary church frescoes and icons of local saints. We also find them in the
monasteries gift shops, sealing local products with the stamp of
authenticity (Figure 8). Athos and (especially) Meteoras landscapes
are commodities available for sale: one can consume Athos coastal
landscape from the boat on organized trips around the peninsula (Fig-
ure 6), find Meteoras landscape for sale in souvenir shops, or simply as
a hotel room extrayes, because we do attach a price to landscape.
Figure 7. Incense from Mount Athos (photograph by the author)

Figure 8. Honey from Rousanou Monastery, Meteora (photograph by the

author)
The main attraction of Meteoras landscape is its unique monoliths.

On Athos, by contrast, landscape is usually defined more in terms of
pristinity than wonder. The landscape of Meteora is unique, you dont
find it anywhere else, an Athonite monk said. Thats why it gets mass
tourism. By contrast, you can find Athos-like sceneries elsewhere in
Greece. Yet, because of its cragginess and relative isolation, as well
as the lack of asphalted roads, grazing animals and limited presence
of motorized vehicles on the peninsula, Mount Athos is one of the
most extraordinary botanical preserves in the Mediterranean, hosting
a number of rare and endemic species (Rackham, 2004). As Andriotis
notes, wilderness as combined with the physically demanding character
of certain routes make Athos attractive to a whole category of interna-
tional trekkers after the explorer experience (2009, p. 77), as well as
to local mountaineering clubs. These quintessentially masculine wil-
derness encounters are best represented in blog accounts of heroic
ascents of Athos peak in the best Victorian mountaineering tradition
(della Dora, 2011a, pp. 146156; Schama, 2005, pp. 458489; Bell &
Lyall, 2004, p. 21):
We moved along and at 13:10 we were at 2033 m and then there was
only the blue sky. We made it! . . . The stunning view, the green land
of Athos, the blue seas wherever you looked. The strange somewhat
threatening feeling that you are not surrounded by anything . . .
(German blogger: http://athos.web-log.nl/athos_agios_oros_/2007/

05/a_hike_to_the_t.html (retrieved May 1, 2011)).
Athos conformation is naturally panoptic, with the peak dominating
the entire peninsula. But panopticism can be enjoyed only for few brief
moments and by a selected elite (most Athonite monks have them-
selves never climbed the mountain). By contrast, Meteora is structured
as a landscape for visual consumption, with scenic spots set along the
roads leading to the monasteries, and terraces akin to viewing plat-
forms within the monasteries themselves. Thanks to asphalted roads,
totalizing views of the valley are accessible to everyone, including el-
derly women and physically disabled, who can be lifted to the monas-
teries by electric hauling systems (the successors of the old nets). As
opposed to Athos, Meteoras is a visitor-friendly nature (Dicks,
2003, p. 113).
Athos quasi-insular enclosure and the coastal location of most of its
monasteries invite periplus (Figure 6) and peripatetic exploration. As
early as in the fourteenth century Athos was defined as a mainland
among the islands and island among the mainlands and recounted
as a space which the visitor could either walk or sail around, finding
shelters and ports along its perimeter, as well as monastic fortresses
disposed as to form a dance (Ioseph Kalothetos, in Tsames, 1980).
Today visitors blogs, as well as dynamic web pages directed at pilgrims
and even souvenirs emphasize this aspect, presenting the peninsula as
a sequence of architecturally different monasteries parading under the
eyes of the prospective pilgrim. Yet, visitors here are by necessity selec-
tive because of time and transportation limits:
Visiting Mt. Athos was a completely unique experience. In our three
days, we hiked through some of the most pristine and remote wilder-
ness in Greece, ate in a thousand year old refectory in the company of
bearded, black-robed monks, and saw some of the most important
religious relics in the world (US blogger, http://thedailyfeta.blog-
spot.com/2010/03/mt-athos-into-land-of-monks.html (retrieved
December 20, 2010)).
In Meteora, by contrast, distances are shorter and drivable by car, so the
six monasteries can be done in one day; they are generally perceived as
boxes to be ticked, or loci to be collected. Visitors experience of the
landscape is an accelerated sublime (Bell & Lyall, 2004, p. 21). For many
Meteoras landscape is itself a collectible. It is a node within a broader
geography of remarkable mountain sceneries, or heritage sites:
I am not religious, just here for the scenery. I have been Yosemite
National Park, Torres del Pane in Chile, Swiss Alps, Long Bay in Viet-
nam, so now Meteora fits in (American, M 6675).
We only stayed in Meteora for one day because we had only one week
to see Greece and we want to do Delphi, Olympia, Athens and other
some small places too (German, M 3645).
In Meteora as on Athos, pilgrims may move around the same circuits
as other visitors, but with a difference. In the Orthodox tradition, pil-
grimage (or proskyn e ma) refers to the act of bowing down before an
icon, or relics, rather than to the transformative act of the journey (per-
egrinatio). It emphasizes the act of kissing, or touching the sacred ob-
ject, rather than the process of reaching it. For the Orthodox
pilgrim it does not really matter if the shrine is reached on foot or
by car. Pilgrimage is not a mere inspirational matter. It is rather a pos-
sibility to experience a glimpse of paradise at the shrine in a strong,
ontological sense through the sacra, which is through icons, relics, lit-
urgies, and so on (Gothoni, 1994; Bowman, 1991; Dubisch, 1995) and
seek for spiritual counselling (Rahkala, 2010). Landscape then does
not really matter; what makes pilgrimage meaningful are the sacra
and the people at the shrine. What does truly matter is the microcosm
of the church, rather than what surrounds it:
I visited Meteora to attend to some religious services, to venerate the
relics and talk to the nuns (Greek Orthodox, F 2635)
I go to Docheiariou every year to attend to the feast of the Archangels
(Greek Orthodox, M 4655)
A visiting Greek monk and an Egyptian Copt priest in Meteora thus
dismissed my research project altogether: We are not here for the
landscape; tourists are after landscape! We are here for the saints.
As opposed to venerating the relics, the two perceived looking at land-
scape a distraction, a frivolous superficial activity. But do pilgrims just
ignore the landscape? And are tourists just distanced gazers always un-
moved by the religious character of the place?
While the focus of Orthodox pilgrims is the act of veneration within
the church, their journey does not occur within an empty space. As
Andriotis showed, solitude in the wilderness is an important element
in visitors experience of Mount Athos: the colours, shapes, textures,
and other physical qualities of the landscape include the spiritualized
environment through which the pilgrim passes and the place itself
combines spiritual search with physical journey (2009, p. 77). Delight-
ful views dominate the pilgrims and Athonite monks photographic
collections I examined (besides long sequences of liturgical snap-
shots). On Athos walking is, by necessity, the primary mode of locomo-
tion. While not a requirement for Orthodox proskyn e ma, walking allows
the pilgrim to subvert or transcend the rushing, mechanized world of
modernity . . . It emphasizes a slowing down rather than speeding up of
life (Coleman & Eade, 2004, p. 11). As opposed to driving, walking
also increases opportunities for scenic appreciation and enframing
nature (Crandell, 1993).
Likewise, in Meteora, proskyn e ma cannot be totally divorced from
moving through and gazing at the surrounding landscape. Even if
the base of the monasteries is usually reached by coach or car (the asp-
halted roads are not designed for walking, though they can be walked),
as with other visitors, pilgrims have to cross bridges and often climb
steep stairs carved in the rock in order to reach the monastery. Many
of the pilgrims I observed in this process stopped at panoramic spots
and took pictures of the scenery, though charging it with different val-
ues: the struggle of ascetics, the holiness of Creation, eternity.
In such a rocky forest, between earth and heaven, it would have been
strange if the monks had not built their home, just as birds build their
nests on trees. They built their homes there to be as close to God as
possible. The ancient fathers struggled and suffered to build their
monasteries on the rocks. It was not easy to ascend with nets, as they
used to do, or to lift up all the materials for construction. Therefore
landscape and the environment help humans inner journey towards
God (Greek Orthodox monk, 5665).
The landscape transmits very strong sensations. As you stand in front
of the majestic rocks you feel awe and wonder, you feel inclined to
pray and exalt the Creator. For spiritual seekers [like myself], the
rocks and the monasteries of Meteora transpire the holiness of the
monks who lived their ascetic life there (Greek Orthodox, F 2635).
Years pass by, the rocks remain. People age, the rocks remain. The
soul, like the rock, does not belong to what is mortal (Theotekne,
1988).
In a symbolic sense, landscape can thus serve as a source of spiritual
inspiration for the Orthodox pilgrim to Athos and Meteora. It is both a
medium and an icon of moral models, as well as an overwhelming, awe-
inspiring presence. Even when accurately staged and presented
through viewing platforms, it remains wild and holy.
BLURRING BOUNDARIES: ARE YOU A PILGRIM OR A TOURIST?

The motivations of visitors to a sacred site are complex and multi-
dimensional. Some are seeking a life-changing experience, others
merely somewhere to while away a wet afternoon. Some wish to wor-
ship, others to marvel or just to explore (Shackley, 2001, p. xviii). As
various scholars noted, contemporary religious tourism in Western
Europe is closely connected with holiday and cultural tourism and
the two are usually hardly distinguishable (Rinschede, 1992, p. 52;
see also Griffin, 1994; Nolan & Nolan, 1989; Nolan & Nolan, 1992).
By contrast, in an Orthodox context one can usually tell between a
proskyn e s and a secular (or non-Orthodox) visitor. At a first glance,
e t
what distinguishes Orthodox pilgrims from other visitors is their dress
code and the way they perform in the monasteries. The former light
candles, kiss icons, write down names for commemoration; the latter
merely look around and take pictures (Figures 9 and 10).
Most of my informants in Meteora defined themselves tourists as
opposed to pilgrims, because, they claimed, they were there for the
scenery, rather than to pray. The distinction, however, is more blurred
than one would expect. If fifty years ago most Christian visitors to
churches and cathedrals in Europe would themselves have been
churchgoers, today this is no longer the case (Rinschede, 1992, p.
21). In a society that is increasingly looking to the West, new hybrid cat-
egories of Greek Orthodox visitors are increasingly flanking the tradi-
tional proskyn e s (Rahkala, 2010, p. 37; Ware, 1983).
e t
A Greek woman, for example, defined herself both a tourist and a pil-
grim because she had come here both for the beauty of the rocks and
Figure 9. Tourists at Great Meteoron (photograph by the author)
Figure 10. Pilgrims at Rousanou Monastery, Meteora (photograph by the

author)
for the calmness of the monasteries. She described her experience of

Meteora as being on the top of the world, but she did not really men-
tion icons and saints. Another Greek Orthodox visitor defined herself a
pilgrim, because I always try to find the real and secret value of a place
(again, no mention of sacra or spiritual counsellors). These womens
experiences are somewhat akin to the spiritual experiences of the rural
tourists to the Lake District described by Sharpley and Jepson (2011);
both categories of visitors find a connection between self and world
through the natural environment. At the same time, however, Greek
weekend excursionists visiting Meteora out of season would still light
candles and write down names for commemoration, but this would just
be a complement to hiking in the nature, rather than the main
purpose of their visit. Other visitors defined themselves neither one

nor the other:
I simply admire the beauty of every moment and adore the gifts of
nature which have been given to us (Greek, M 36-45, no religious
affiliation).
These typologies of visitors can also be found on Athos, but to a smal-
ler extent, because of the bureaucratic process to access the peninsula
and the impossibility of a one-day visit (the ferry only runs once a day).
But how about non-Orthodox international tourists? Are self-defined
tourists after landscape left untouched by religious inspiration? Is their
quest for authenticity different from the pilgrims quest for the sacred?
I asked the nuns of Meteora. For them, opening the monasteries to
tourism is not only a source of income; it is a mission:
We accept people from every country and religious belief. Some of
the tourists cast a quick glance and leave unmoved; others are struck
by the magic of the place and the mystic atmosphere of the church.
Others start to problematize themselves and to ask questions. Some-
times some of them do not even want to walk out of the church. Here
you feel close to heaven.
These feelings, however, do not seem confined to the space of the
church. For a young Belgian man, for example, Meteora . . . is a place
where one can find peace and inner rest. The way these people live is
very inspiring . . . the landscape is a projection of this peace and si-
lence, with only birds whistling. The nature actually demands us to
think about our lives. Similarly, a couple of German backpackers de-
fined Meteora a perfect destination to meditate, whereas, gazing at
the landscape, an American evangelical tourist commented:
As an engineer, I wonder how God created the formations around
Meteora. This is the only place I have seen this type of formation,
in my many travels. . . . The monasteries add to the charm and history
of the area.
Other self-declared international tourists defined Meteoras land-
scape awesome, out of place, awakening senses, breathtaking,
surreal, spectacular, an eye opener, and provoking a sense of won-
derment. Besides the wow factor produced by the discrepancy be-
tween the size of the pre-picture in ones mind (conjured up by
brochures, postcards, and other images of the site) and actual dimen-
sions, Meteoras landscape embeds an surprise element created by
the contrast between the vertical pinnacles and the surrounding flat
countryside (Bell & Lyall, 2004, p. 26). As an American blogger writes:
The ride to Kalambaka was only about twenty minutes long, and
within fifteen, the cliffs of Meteora suddenly swung into view. And I
dont believe Ill ever forget that moment. I was listening to Moon-
shadow by Cat Stevens, and I almost cried. I got off the bus and spent
at least five minutes just staring upward in awe (http://k8peter-
son.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/october-trip-part-1/ (retrieved May
1, 2011)).
Non-Orthodox religious tourists (Rinschede, 1992) referred to

landscape as spiritually uplifting, making them feel very close to
my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, while at the same time feeling out-
siders to the Orthodox tradition and disagreeing on practices such as
the veneration of icons, for example.
In areas of natural beauty, such as alpine or coastal settings, as well as
in spiritual retreat centres, David Conradson observes, people may
find themselves lost for words. This arrest of speech, where human vol-
ubility is disrupted, typically reflects on both a sensory and cognitive
overwhelming and a heightened consciousness of the present moment.
The passage of time appears to be slowed (Conradson, 2008, p. 33).
What strikes most international tourists and local visitors to Meteora
out of season and to Athos seems to be their quietness, the lack of
loud noises (Andriotis, 2009, p. 77). For western religious visitors
and tourists, silence is a marker of uncorruptedness; it leads to intro-
spection. An American doctor said he was bound to Athos to think
and meditate: I wish to walk in the silence of the forest and think
about my [late] father. As an Italian wrote in the visitor book, Mount
Athos is not what you see, but what you feel.
To local visitors and weekend excursionists to Meteora, the quietness
of a still landscape signals a break from the everyday. A student
claimed to have found in Meteora an antidote to her melancholic tem-
perament: Nature here has a therapeutic quality: I get away from the
noise and my hectic life in Thessalonica. Here I feel regenerated. I feel
better. A local villager I met on the road similarly said he would take
regular strolls up in the rocks when not at work: Everyone in the coffee
shop is talking about the elections nowadays. Its crazy! It causes me
headache. I come up here to get some oxygen. For these two visitors,
Meteora is an escape. It provides a spot from which to put the world
into perspective; it allows them to raise above earthly cares; to look
at their lives from a distance, even if for a brief moment (Figure 11).
Like Athos, for them Meteora is a pause.
Figure 11. View of Kastraki from Meteora (photograph by the author)

CONCLUSIONS
Experiencing otherness (whether divine, natural, or cultural) de-
mands geographical separation. Seeking refugewhether physically
or imaginatively, or bothin insular utopias is no new practice (Gillis,
2004). In the case of sacred places like Athos, however, the irony is that
while Byzantine typika (foundational charters) usually emphasise the
struggle against wilderness to carve these gardened islands out of wil-
derness (see Talbot, 2002), today, the struggle is to preserve them as
the last islands of uncorrupted wild nature, and, at the same time, as
the last spiritual refuges in an increasingly secularized world (Hobbs,
1995). A Greek Orthodox pilgrim to Athos wrote in the visitor book:
I wish with all my soul that our most merciful God give strength to the
abbot and the fathers of this monastery, so that they can preserve the
Orthodox tradition . . . May this place remain always a beacon of faith
and a safe harbour for the souls.
In different ways, visitors to Athos and Meteora all share a desire to
break from the everyday, to access something unique. And no matter
what. I wish I were a pilgrim to better understand the spirituality [of
Meteora], a South African tourist said. Pilgrims are after an encounter
with the holy; tourists are after an encounter with cultural otherness or
pristine nature. But the holy and wilderness blur into one another
simply because they are defined by imaginary boundaries, or perhaps
because they have no boundaries. In Meteora and Athos they blend
in landscape; and so do these categories of visitors.
Insularity is a mental construct, rather than a geographical object.
Pilgrims are not bothered by other pilgrims. But tourists are by other
tourists (see Coleman & Crang, 2004; Urry, 1990). We perceive tourists
as contaminating the landscape and we do not want them in our pic-
tures, precisely because they are paradoxical reminders of the everyday-
ness we are trying to escape. They are mirror images of that part of
ourselves we decided to leave home, together with modernity. This is
why Meteora is perceived by visitors as contaminated, as opposed to
more strictly regulated Athos. But today nowhere is an island, even
Mount Athos (Friedlander, 2008). Visitors to the holy peninsula often
feel bothered by technological intrusions from the world, such as
monks speedboats or cell phones (http://holymountain-agiono-
ros.blogspot.com/2010/06/pilgrimage-to-mount-athos-by-professor.
html (retrieved May 1, 2011)). Perhaps this is because we like islands;
we need islands; we find them reassuringeven if they are just con-
structions of our mind.
Conceptualized and managed as both natural and sacred islands,
Athos and Meteora constitute privileged sites for tourists and pilgrims
shared quest for authenticity and thus ideal case studies for exploring
ruptures and continuities between these two categories of visitors. As
this study suggested, tourists and pilgrims are driven to both sites by
different motivations, but their gazes curiously converge, or rather
blur, in the landscape. Orthodox proskyn e s, whose main goal was
e t
the veneration of icons and relics at the shrine or attendance to church
services, revealed to be not left unmoved by the scenery. At the same

time, non-Orthodox and even non-religious visitors seemed to experi-
ence a more or less subconscious spiritual dimension through aesthetic
contemplation and stillness. As with liturgical experience, the natural
environment was found to heighten their levels of sensory awareness
(cf. Sharpley & Jepson, 2011, p. 58). Confronted with Meteora and
Athos overwhelming natural sceneries, the distinction between self
and object seemed to blur, allowing for greater connectivity with the
surrounding environment and with the world at large, the ultimate
stage of spiritual fulfilmentand the ultimate irony of island-making.
AcknowledgementsResearch for this article has been supported by AHRC/ESRC Religion and
Society grant AH/HOO9868/1. I would like to acknowledge the fathers of Docheiariou mon-
astery (Mount Athos) for their most precious assistance and the sisters of Meteora for the
warm hospitality. I would also like to thank Chrysoula, Spyro and Dita for helping me hand
out questionnaires and making my stay in Kalambaka most enjoyable, and finally three anon-
ymous referees for their valuable comments and suggestions on a previous draft of this article.
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Submitted 31 May 2011. Final version 7 October 2011. Accepted 9 November 2011. Refereed
anonymously. Coordinating Editor: Antonio Russo

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Della Dora, Setting and Bluring Boundaries PDF

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Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 39, No. 2, pp.

SETTING AND BLURRING

Great and wonderful are Thy deeds, O God the Almighty!

Veronica della Dora is Senior Lecturer in Geographies of Knowledge at the School of

many today the term wilderness evokes nostalgia, compassion, per-

The article is structured into five substantive sections. Having briefly

MOUNT ATHOS AND METEORA AS MONASTIC ISLANDS

Figure 1. Map of Mount Athos (Source: della Dora, V. Imagining Mount

Figure 2. Map of Meteora (source: http://www.planetware.com/i/map/GR/

Figure 4. View of Meteora from ground level (photograph by the author)

hesychia (quietness) sought after by hermits and monks, as it continues

RESEARCH METHODS AND APPROACHES

naturalistic criteria (http://whc.unesco.org (retrieved December 20,

Figure 5. Setting temporal boundaries at Great Meteoron (photograph by the

THE LANDSCAPE EXPERIENCE

Figure 6. View of Docheiariou Monastery from the boat (photograph by the

Figure 7. Incense from Mount Athos (photograph by the author)

Figure 8. Honey from Rousanou Monastery, Meteora (photograph by the

The main attraction of Meteoras landscape is its unique monoliths.

(German blogger: http://athos.web-log.nl/athos_agios_oros_/2007/

BLURRING BOUNDARIES: ARE YOU A PILGRIM OR A TOURIST?

Figure 9. Tourists at Great Meteoron (photograph by the author)

Figure 10. Pilgrims at Rousanou Monastery, Meteora (photograph by the

for the calmness of the monasteries. She described her experience of

purpose of their visit. Other visitors defined themselves neither one

Non-Orthodox religious tourists (Rinschede, 1992) referred to

Figure 11. View of Kastraki from Meteora (photograph by the author)

services, revealed to be not left unmoved by the scenery. At the same

Collins-Kreiner, N. (2009). Geographies and pilgrimages: Changing concepts in

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