Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus is the tallest mountain in Greece.

It stands close to the sea. Its rocky top often has snow and clouds. Forests and flowers cover its sides. Some of its flowers grow nowhere else in the world.

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece. Its tallest summit, called Mytikas, is about 2,918 meters high. Olympus is not one single peak but a massif, a big group of peaks, ridges and deep gorges in northern Greece, near the Gulf of Thermai on the Aegean Sea.

What makes Olympus special is how steeply it rises. UNESCO notes that the land climbs from the seashore to the very top in just 17.5 kilometers. Along the way, the rain and dampness change a lot, and gorges and slopes face many different ways, so the mountain has many small climates, and an amazing variety of plants and animals lives on it.

Britannica describes Olympus as Greece's highest peak, part of the Olympus massif near the Gulf of Thermai (Thermaïkós) of the Aegean, lying astride the border between Macedonia and Thessaly; it gives 2,917 m, while UNESCO's 2026 World Heritage decision gives 2,918 m for the summit, Mytikas. A lower adjacent peak to the south, Lower Olympus, rises to 1,588 m.

UNESCO stresses the massif's steep altitudinal gradient, from 0 m to 2,918 m within 17.5 km, which, with its closeness to the sea, produces strong contrasts in rainfall and humidity. Combined with complex topography of gorges, ravines and slopes facing different directions, this creates many microclimates and climatic 'islands'. UNESCO calls Olympus a classic 'sky island': an isolated high mountain where species have evolved in isolation, giving it an exceptional number of plants and endemic species for its small area.

Almost 2,000 kinds of plants grow on Olympus.

There are orchids, bellflowers and violets. Tall pines, firs and beech trees make forests. Wild animals such as chamois, deer and wolves live there. Eagles fly above.

Olympus is one of the richest places for plants in Greece. UNESCO counts 1,983 kinds of plants, about 28 percent of all the plants in Greece, and 27 of them grow only on Olympus and nowhere else on Earth. One of them, Jankaea heldreichii, is a survivor from the Tertiary period, millions of years ago.

Depending on the height, you find shrubs such as Kermes oak and strawberry tree, trees such as black pine, Bulgarian fir, beech and Bosnian pine, and high meadows and cliffs, where most of the plants found only on Olympus grow. Animals include the Balkan chamois, roe deer, wolves, wild boar and red squirrels, and brown bears have come back. About 157 kinds of birds have been seen, including golden eagles.

UNESCO's 2026 statement records 1,983 vascular plant taxa (about 28 percent of Greece's flora), 27 strict local endemics and 60 Greek endemics; 51 taxa are on the IUCN Red List (13 Endangered, 17 Vulnerable, 21 Near Threatened). Subalpine meadows and chasmophytic (cliff-crevice) communities hold most of the endemics, and Jankaea heldreichii survives as a Tertiary relict, evidence of Olympus's role as a refuge. The property also hosts 19 habitat types listed in Annex I of the EU Habitats Directive.

The fauna listed by UNESCO comprises 157 bird species (36 on Annex I of the EU Birds Directive), 40 mammals, 23 reptiles, 8 amphibians, 1 fish and 19 invertebrates. The national park's own account, published by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture's Leivithra park, names the Balkan chamois, roe deer, wolf, wildcat, badger, beech marten and wild boar, notes that the brown bear recently reappeared, and lists raptors such as the golden and short-toed eagles; its counts (over 1,700 plant taxa, 26 local endemics, 38 mammals, 156 birds) differ slightly from UNESCO's newer figures.

For a long time, nobody had climbed to the very top.

In 1913, a local hunter named Christos Kakalos led two visitors to the top. Later, Olympus became Greece's first national park, to keep its plants and animals safe.

Olympus's rugged peaks stayed hard to reach until the early 1900s, UNESCO notes. On 2 August 1913, Christos Kakalos, a wild-goat hunter from the town of Litochoro, guided two Swiss visitors, the photographer Frédéric Boissonnas and the writer Daniel Baud-Bovy, through fog and wind to the top of Mytikas, the highest summit.

In 1938 Olympus became Greece's first national park. UNESCO made it a biosphere reserve in 1981, and in 2026 it added the wider area of Mount Olympus to the World Heritage List, partly for its amazing plant life.

UNESCO observes that the high peaks remained largely inaccessible until the early 20th century. The refuge history recorded by Nikos Nesi describes the 1913 expedition: Boissonnas and Baud-Bovy hired Christos Kakalos, a wild-goat hunter of Litochoro, explored the high plateau and nearby summits, and on 2 August, in fog, hail and wind, first climbed a lower top before the mist cleared to reveal a higher one; Kakalos led them up steep rock to Mytikas. A note the Swiss left in a bottle was found 14 years later.

Protection followed: a 1938 royal decree created Greece's first national park; the area joined the European Network of Biogenetic Reserves in 1976, became a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1981 and a Natura 2000 site in 2006. In 2026 the World Heritage Committee, meeting in Busan, inscribed 'The Wider Area of Mount Olympus' under criteria (vi), for its place in ancient Greek religion and culture, and (x), for biodiversity, with management by the Olympus National Park unit of Greece's Natural Environment and Climate Change Agency.