Makrinitsa is one of the stone villages of Pelion, the mountain behind Volos.
Diagram by Greece Trips. Free to reuse with credit - CC BY 4.0.
Pelion carries stone villages with slate roofs among chestnut and apple orchards: Makrinitsa, Portaria, Tsagarada, Milies, Vizitsa. Makrinitsa is the closest to Volos and the best known of them.
Why Pelion is the reason to base in Volos
The mountain behind is the reason many people base here. Volos itself is a working port city; Pelion is what you drive up into, and it is a different landscape entirely from the Aegean coast an hour away.
The east coast below the villages has the beaches, several of them long and pale. So a Pelion trip is mountain villages in the morning and a coast in the afternoon, which is an unusual combination in Greece.
The railway
The old narrow-gauge railway, the Moutzouris, still runs a tourist service on part of the line between Ano Lechonia and Milies, over a Ferrari-designed bridge.
That is worth planning around if trains interest you at all - it is a surviving piece of the mountain’s industrial history rather than a heritage recreation, and the bridge is the detail people remember.
We print no timetable or fare. It is a seasonal tourist service and those are exactly the details that change.
What else Volos is the base for
Ferries and hydrofoils to Skiathos, Skopelos and Alonissos leave from the port, which makes Volos a natural start or end to a Sporades trip - the Sporades route is built on that, and Athens to Volos covers the leg in.
Volos also sits beside some of the oldest settlements in Europe, with visible house foundations and, at Dimini, a Mycenaean palace complex above them.
Practical notes
A car. Pelion is a mountain of villages linked by winding roads; this is not a bus proposition.
The season is the mountain season. Orchard country reads very differently in spring and autumn than in August, and the villages stay open when the coast thins.
We print no village opening hours - it is a village, not a site.
Common questions
What is Pelion? The mountain behind Volos, carrying stone villages with slate roofs among chestnut and apple orchards, with beaches on the east coast below.
What is the Moutzouris? The old narrow-gauge railway, still running a tourist service on part of the line between Ano Lechonia and Milies, over a Ferrari-designed bridge.
Is Makrinitsa the best of the villages? It is the best known and the closest to Volos. Portaria, Tsagarada, Milies and Vizitsa are the others our guide names, and we do not rank them.
Next
Our Volos guide has the practicalities, things to do in Volos covers the city and the mountain, and where to stay covers the bases.