Faith allows the abstruse, the rigid, the sacred and the cruel; at an inaccessible height in the Peneios Valley in Greece stands the Metéora.

‘Metéora’ means ‘lofty’ or ‘suspended in air’. There, at the summit of rock columns that soar 400 meters high like giant pillars are six Greek orthodox monasteries. When they were built in the 15th century, everything—building materials, tools, a