Megalo Papingo under the Astraka towers

Papingo is really two villages, Megalo and Mikro, sitting on a shelf under the Astraka towers — bare limestone walls that rise more than a thousand metres straight out of the pasture behind the houses. The scale of that backdrop is what makes the village photograph unlike anywhere else in Greece.

Megalo Papingo is the larger and the one with the cobbled central lane, the plane trees, the church square and a row of restored stone mansions with slate roofs and heavy wooden doors. Everything is built from the same grey rock as the mountain, which means the whole frame is one material and the light does all the work.

The towers face roughly south-west, so they take the last hour of sun and go apricot while the village below is already in shadow — that split is the strongest picture here. Morning is flatter but good for the lanes themselves, which are narrow and hold soft reflected light.

On the edge of the village the Rogovo stream runs through the Kolymbithres, a set of natural rock pools worn into the bed, ten minutes' walk from the square. Papingo is small and mostly guesthouses, so it fills at weekends and in August; a weekday in June or October is close to empty.