Vikos-Aoös

Vikos-Aoös National Park was established in 1973 in the region of Epirus, in north-western Greece, within the district of Zagori, and protects a territory of limestone mountain in the northern Pindus. It was later incorporated, along with the Pindos park, into the larger Northern Pindus National Park.

Its most famous feature is the Vikos gorge, cut by the River Voidomatis into the limestone of the Tymfi massif. It reaches some 900 metres deep with a minimum width that narrows to little more than a hundred metres in places, which puts it among the deepest canyons in the world in relation to its width. The River Aoös crosses the park to the north in another spectacular defile.

The combination of altitudes, substrates and aspects has produced an exceptional botanical richness, with hundreds of medicinal species that made famous the vikogiatroi, the traditional herbalist doctors of Zagori. The wildlife includes brown bear, wolf, Balkan chamois and a notable cliff-dwelling birdlife. The cultural landscape is inseparable from the natural one: the forty-six villages of Zagori, with their stone houses, their cobbled roads and their stone arch bridges over the rivers, form an architectural ensemble of great value, and the villages of Papingo and Monodendri are the usual gateways to the park.