On Location - Meteora, Greece

The name, ‘Meteora’ stems from the Greek adjective, meteoros, which means ‘middle of the sky’.  With an average height of 312m (1,027 ft) the aptly named rock formations of Meteora jut out of the ground like giant fingers made of stone.  The rock formations of Meteora are composed of a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate. The conglomerate was formed of deposits of stone, sand, and mud from streams flowing into a delta at the edge of a lake, over millions of years. About 60 million years ago a series of earth movements pushed the seabed upward, creating a high plateau and causing many vertical fault lines in the thick layer of sandstone. The huge rock pillars were then formed by weathering by water, wind, and extremes of temperature on the vertical faults. What makes Meteora unusual is that the conglomerate formations, and type of weathering, are confined to a relatively localised area within the surrounding mountain formations.  The formations are home to Greek Eastern Orthodox monasteries; of the 24 originally built, there are only 6 still functioning.  Of these 4 are occupied solely by men, with the remaining 2 occupied solely by women; each one houses no more than 10 individuals.  As early as the eleventh century, monks occupied the caverns of Meteora. The construction of monasteries did not start until the fourteenth century, when the monks sought somewhere to hide in the face of an increasing number of Turkish attacks on Greece. At this time, access to the top was via removable ladders or windlass. Nowadays, getting up there is a lot simpler due to steps being carved into the rock during the 1920s.