Note sull'episodio
Meteora, meaning lofty or elevated, is a group of Eastern Orthodox monasteries on sandstone and conglomerate pillars up to 550 meters high in Thessaly, Greece. The rock formed about 60 million years ago in the Paleogene as streams dumped sediment into a lake delta, then tectonic uplift cracked the plateau and erosion cut along the faults. Nearby Theopetra Cave holds 50,000 years of human habitation, including evidence of Neanderthals giving way to modern humans and of the shift to farming, with fossil diatoms tracking ancient climate. A stone wall blocking two-thirds of its entrance, built 23,000 years ago during the Ice Age, is the oldest known built structure in Greece. From the 9th century, hermit monks lived in rock fissures and gathered on Sundays at a chapel at the foot of the Doupiani rock.
Turkish raids in the 14th century drove the monks to the summits. Athanasios the Meteorite founded the Great Meteoron on the Broad Rock between 1356 and 1372 with backing from Simeon Uroš, protected by a retractable ladder. At Varlaam, first climbed in 1350 and then abandoned for two centuries, the brothers Theophanes and Nektarios from Ioannina spent 22 years hoisting materials in 1517 and after, then built in about 20 days. There were 24 monasteries at the peak and six remain, four for men and two for women. Steps and bridges came in the 1920s, and in 1921 Queen Marie of Romania became the first woman admitted to the Great Meteoron. The pillars survived a magnitude 7 quake in 1954, though a 2005 rockfall closed roads.
- The monks' answer about replacing the haul ropes: only when the Lord lets them break
- A brick-roofed hospital at the Great Meteoron built to guard against fire high above the valley
- St Nicholas Anapausas stacked vertically on a summit barely larger than a living room
- St Stephen's, converted to a nunnery in 1961, with workshops for icons, incense, and embroidery
- Appearances in For Your Eyes Only, the Eyrie of Game of Thrones, and Linkin Park's album Meteora