METEORA, a group of monasteries in Thessaly, north of the Peneius valley, near the village of Kalabaka (the ancient Aeginium, mediaeval Stagus or Stagoi), not quite 20 m. N.E. of Trikkala. From the Cambunian hills two masses of rock project southward into the plain, eroded into isolated columns 85 to 30o ft. high, "some like gigantic tusks, some like sugar loaves, and some like vast stalagmites," all of iron-grey or red dish-brown conglomerate of gneiss, mica-slate, syenite and green stone. The monasteries stand on the summit of these pinnacles; accessible only by rope and net worked by a windlass from the top, or by a series of almost perpendicular ladders. The peak on which St. Stephen's is built does not rise higher than the ground behind, and the deep, narrow chasm is spanned by a drawbridge. Owing to the confined area, the buildings are closely packed, but each monastery contains beside the monks' cells and water-cis terns, at least one church and a refectory, and some also a library.
At one time they were 14 in number, but now not more than four (the Great Monastery, Holy Trinity, St. Barlaam's and St. Stephen's) are inhabited by more than two or three monks. The present church of the Great Monastery was erected, according to Leake's reading of the local inscription, in 1388 (Bjornstall, the Swedish traveller, had given 1371), and it is one of the larg est and handsomest in Greece. A number of the mss. from these monasteries are now in the National Library at Athens. Aeginium is described by Livy as a strong place and Stagus appears in Byzantine writers.
See W. M. Leake, Northern Greece (4 vols., 1835) ; Prof. Kriegk in Zeitschr. f. allg. Erdk. (1858) ; H. F. Tozer, Researches in the High lands of Turkey (1860 ; L. Heuzey and H. Daumet, Mission arche ologique de Macedoine (1876), where there is a map of the monasteries and their surroundings; Guide-Joanne; Grece, vol. ii. (1891).