Amazing Monasteries!
If you have seen pictures of Greece or spend any time looking through travel brochures then you have certainly been impressed by the monasteries perched on top of enormous rocks and have probably wondered how on earth they built them.
The area of Meteora was originally settled by monks who lived in caves within the rocks during the 11th Century. But as the times became more unsure during an age of Turkish occupation, brigandry and lawlessness, they climbed higher and higher up the rock face until they were living on the inaccessable peaks where they were able to build by bringing material and people up with ladders and baskets and build the first monasteries. This was also how the monasteries were reached until the nineteen twenties and now there are roads, pathways and steps to the top.
The monasteries attracted not only the deeply religious, but the philosophers, poets, painters and the deep thinkers of Greece. Today only six of the monasteries are active:
Agia Triada or Holy Trinity, founded by the monk Dometius in the 15th century.
Varlaam Monastery, founded in 1517 by Theophanis and Nektarios Apsaradas.
Monastery of Agios Nikolaos Anapafsas, built in the 16th Century by Dionysious, the Metropolitan of Larissa and named after an old Patron.
Roussanou Monastery, founded in 1545 by Joasaph and Maximos, two brothers from Epirus who built it on the ruins of an even older church.
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