Meteora – A Sanctuary Of Harmony And Quietness “Hanging” In The Sky

AncientPages.com - This is Meteora, the word means: roughly, midair, in Greek.

It's a special place that does seem to hang in the sky. It's a sanctuary of harmony and quietness that can be found in the region of Thessaly (an ancient Aeolia) mentioned in Homer's Odyssey.

For nearly a thousand years, spiritual seekers and monastics have sought to link their lives to the divine by climbing atop the massive 400-meter-high platforms of stone that rise to the clouds.
Clouds often fill the valley of the Pineios River below, and the tips of the mountains seem to float on top of the fog like ships in a harbor.

There are six Meteora monasteries, all in the same area. They were built on natural sandstone rock pillars, in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries.

But until the 1920s the only way up to the monastery was to put up many ladders or large nets, until steps were built into the rock.

The process that created the Meteora outcroppings is not perfectly understood.

It is believed that these very strange formations of rock were formed about 60 million years ago and humans moved in around probably 50,000 years ago.

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