Meteora, in the plain of Thessaly, is a cluster of Eastern Orthodox monasteries built on the summits of sheer sandstone pillars rising hundreds of metres from the ground, where inaccessibility itself became a form of devotion.
Hermits, then monasteries
Ascetics are recorded living in the caves and clefts of the rocks from at least the eleventh century, seeking solitude on the pillars. From the fourteenth century organised monasteries were established on the summits, flourishing under Byzantine and later patronage; the name Meteora means "suspended in the air". At their height some two dozen houses crowned the rocks, reached only by removable ladders and by nets hauled up on ropes, a deliberate separation from the world below.
The surviving houses
Six monasteries remain in use, four of monks and two of nuns, their churches decorated with post-Byzantine frescoes and their treasuries holding manuscripts and icons. The communities are now small, a handful of people in buildings made for many more. Unlike Mount Athos, which admits no women, Meteora is open to women visitors, subject to a dress code enforced at the gate; steps and roads cut in the modern era have replaced the ladders and nets.
Silence under pressure
The same roads and steps that allow very large numbers of visitors to arrive have made the contemplative silence the site was built for hard to keep, and the monasteries close in rotation partly to preserve it. Meteora remains an active monastic community and a place of Orthodox pilgrimage as well as a World Heritage site, holding together, with difficulty, its two lives as living monastery and major tourist destination.