The Magic of Meteora

Meteora feels like a mystical place just from the visions of rocky

sandstone pillars reaching up to the sky. Then you notice a few

buildings perched on top. Eastern Orthodox Greek monasteries to be

precise. There are currently six surviving monasteries and it is

amazing to see these hauntingly beautiful structures lighting up the

night sky high above the Thessalian landscape.

Studies suggest that the pinnacles were formed about 60 million years

ago during the Paleogene Period. Weathering and earthquakes then

shaped them into their present shape. Beside the Pindos Mountains, at

the western region of the Thessaly plain in the middle of northern

Greece, these sandstone rocks rise from the ground. The rocks are

composed of a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate. They were formed

about 60 million years ago. A series of earth movements pushed the

seabed upwards, creating a high plateau and causing many fault lines

to appear in the thick layer of sandstone.



It's intriguing to think about how these amazing buildings were built

so long ago. Here's a quick bit of history right out of the Greek

books . Located in central Greece, in the Northwestern part of

Thessaly, mammoth rock towers reach out from the plains. Inside these

enormous sandstone towers, there are natural cavities and fissures.



No one knows for sure when the first people started to seek refuge in

the openings of these rocky towers, but Byzantine scholars think it

happened around the first millennium. Through translation of Greek

language the scholars explained how these caves and openings would

provide protection from the conquerors of the time. The hermit monks

who first arrived were seeking a place of tranquility and prayer.



The first hermit, Barnabas around 950 – 970 AD established the

cloister of the Holy Ghost and followed by two more by 1150 – 1160 AD.

But the name Meteoro did not come till 200 years later when Athanasios

Koinovitis founded a huge monastery on Broad Rock which he named

Meteora. Since then the name stuck and all the rocks would be known as

Meteora, which from Greek to English means "suspended rocks". Monks

used long ladders tied together and large nets to haul goods up an

average elevation of 1,027 feet to the monasteries. It was truly a

"leap of faith" as ropes were only replaced "when the Lord let them

break." In the 1920's steps were cut into the rock making the

monasteries much more accessible. At one time there were 24

monasteries and now only six remain mostly as museums.



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