Meteora

Sandstone towers erupt from the Thessalian plain at Meteora, and on their summits monks built monasteries the Greeks knew as columns of the sky. Hermits settled the rocks from the 11th century; twenty-four monasteries followed in the 15th, during the great revival of the eremitic ideal, and their 16th-century frescoes mark a turning point in post-Byzantine painting. Meteora was inscribed as a Mixed UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988.