# The Sky Monastery > An imagined Orthodox monastery on a pillar of rock above the cloud, which anyone can walk through in a web browser, with essays that set its places beside the monasteries of Meteora in Greece and the customs of Greek monastic life. The house runs on one clock for everyone: a day there passes in one real hour, and its brethren keep the hours of prayer, cook, copy books and tend the vines whether or not anyone is watching. The Sky Monastery itself is fiction. The essays quote two public-domain travellers at length (Robert Curzon, 1849; Athelstan Riley, 1887) and say at their end what is invented and what is sourced. Every page below is plain Markdown. Any page of the site can also be had as Markdown by adding `index.md` to its address or by asking with `Accept: text/markdown`. ## Walk in - [Walk into the Sky Monastery](https://skymonastery.com/walk/): the house itself, in the browser, free and with no account. `https://skymonastery.com/walk/?place=` sets a visitor down at a place; the essays give the stops (for example `katholikon`, `ossuary`, `refectory`, `vineyard`). - [What is happening in the house now](https://skymonastery.com/now.md): the house's date and hour, the office being kept, what is next, the next meal, the season and the moon. The same as JSON: https://skymonastery.com/now ## Start here - [The Sky Monastery: a monastery in the clouds, and the rocks of Meteora](https://skymonastery.com/index.md): Walk a living monastery on a pillar of rock above the cloud, and read of Meteora in Thessaly, where monks have lived on such rocks since the fourteenth century. ## The essays - [The ascent](https://skymonastery.com/meteora/ascent/index.md): How anyone ever got up the rocks of Meteora: Robert Curzon hauled up in a net in 1849, and the windlass of the Sky Monastery, where you can stand now. - [The church](https://skymonastery.com/meteora/church/index.md): The painted churches of Meteora, as Robert Curzon read them in 1849: four columns for the Evangelists, a dome for heaven, the Last Judgment kept to the porch. And the katholikon of the Sky Monastery, where you can stand now. - [The bones](https://skymonastery.com/meteora/bones/index.md): Why a Greek monastery keeps its dead on shelves: three years in the earth, then a name written on the brow. Athelstan Riley among the charnel houses of Athos in 1887, and the ossuary of the Sky Monastery, where you can stand now. - [The hours](https://skymonastery.com/meteora/hours/index.md): How a Greek monastery is called to prayer: a wooden board struck with a mallet, an iron hoop, and bells. Athelstan Riley woken at midnight on Athos in 1887, Robert Curzon at Meteora, and the bell tower of the Sky Monastery, where you can stand now. - [The books](https://skymonastery.com/meteora/books/index.md): Robert Curzon came to Meteora in search of manuscripts. He found a library hidden behind a cupboard, bought two Gospels, and had to give them back. And the scriptorium and library of the Sky Monastery, where you can stand now. - [Bread and wine](https://skymonastery.com/meteora/table/index.md): How a monastery on a rock eats: a kitchen that is all chimney and fireplace, a table in an apse, supper with the fingers, and a barrel the size of a room. Curzon at Meteora, Riley on Athos, and the refectory of the Sky Monastery, where you can stand now. - [The hermits](https://skymonastery.com/meteora/hermits/index.md): Before there were monasteries on the rocks of Meteora there were hermits in their caves. Robert Curzon's account of 1849, and the old hermits' house of the Sky Monastery, where one brother still keeps the hours alone. - [The year](https://skymonastery.com/meteora/year/index.md): A monastery's year turns on its feast. Athelstan Riley climbing Athos for the Transfiguration in 1883, the fasts at the abbots' tables of Meteora, and the vineyard of the Sky Monastery through its four seasons. ## The house's time, the real monasteries, and sources - [The calendar, the clock and the seasons](https://skymonastery.com/calendar/index.md): How time is kept in the Sky Monastery: a day in an hour, a year of twenty-eight days, the hours of prayer and table, the fasts and feasts, and the four seasons on the rock. - [The six houses](https://skymonastery.com/monasteries/index.md): The six monasteries that still stand on the rocks of Meteora, as Robert Curzon found each of them in 1849: the Great Meteoron, Varlaam, St Stephen, the Holy Trinity, Roussanou and St Nicholas. With the places in the Sky Monastery that answer to them. - [Sources and credits](https://skymonastery.com/sources/index.md): What the Sky Monastery is, what is invented in it, the travellers' books its essays are drawn from, and the credit and licence of every picture. ## Optional - [The whole site in one file](https://skymonastery.com/llms-full.txt): every page above, one after another.