The impressive rocks are composed of a mixture of sandstone and hard gravel called conglomerate. Formed 60 million years ago as the bed of sea, which we now know, as the plain of Thessaly. Seismatic movements thrust the sea bed upwards to create a high plateau and split the thick layer of sandstone into innumerable faults. Wind, water and extreme temperatures wore away the fractured sandstone creating the pillars, which are now known as “the rocky forest of Greece”. Hermits and religious ascetics first inhabited the rocky pinnacles, which reach 550 m (1.800 ft) tall, during the 9th century.     Meteora Tour

 The hollows in the rocks offered shelter from the elements and the sheer cliffs deterred casual visitors from interrupting their sail searching and prayers. By the end of the 12th century they had become a loose-knit community which respected the ideas of solitude. The Byzantine Empire by the 14th century was beginning to lose its hold.

 The plain of Thessaly became a battleground between Serbian Kings and Turkish raiders all vying for supremacy of northern Greece. The peaceful monastic communities were particularly vulnerable to the conflicts and in 1334 the monastery of Mount Athos to the southeast of Thessalonica was abandoned.

Ten years later the monk Athanasios led a group of fugitives to Meteora and between 1356 and 1372, on the Broad Rock pinnacle; the Great Meteoron monastery was founded. A long ladder provided the only route to the top, which the monks drew up whenever threatened. As the original dwellings were inadequate due to the increasing number of monks larger and more impressive buildings were begun. The ladder was replaced by a net and rope operated via a windlass from an overhanging gantry. Visitors to the Great Monastery named from the Greek word “ high in the air ” were advised to pray as they made the nerve - wracking a scent. This precarious method has now been replaced by 115 steps.

Of the 24 monasteries that grew up between the 13^th and 16^th centuries only six are still inhabited: The Great Meteoron Agia Triada Agios Nikolaos and Varlaam by monks: Agios Stephanos and Roussanou by nuns. Meteora-this city of Monastic Life of Rocks- stands as the most important and the largest centre of Orthodox Monasticism in Greece, after Mt. Athos.

This stone forest of rocks constitutes one of the most wonderful and impressive geological phenomena on our planet. The most common theory holds the view, that the formation of the rocks was due to the prior existence of a delta shaped cone comprising of river stones and mud, which poured into the ancient Thessaly basin. After the geological separation of the masses of Olympus as well as Ossa, the waters of the basin found an outlet into the Aegean through the Tempi area. Then the delta shaped mass (by the effect of earthquakes, wind and rain for millions of years) broke-up into stones and huge solid rocks up to 400 meters high.