Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus on the border of Macedonia and Thessaly is the highest mountain in Greece at 2,917 metres, whose summit, Mytikas, requires a demanding technical scramble from the upper refuge huts. In antiquity the mountain was considered the dwelling of the twelve Olympian gods, and the entire massif is protected as Greece's first national park, established in 1938. The lower slopes support a diverse ecological gradient from coastal Mediterranean scrub through chestnut and beech forest to the exposed alpine zone of the upper ridges.