About this site

# Sources and credits

## What the Sky Monastery is

The Sky Monastery is an imagined Orthodox monastery on a pillar of rock above a sea of cloud. It can be walked through in a web browser, on a phone or a computer, with nothing to install and no account. It runs on one clock for everyone: a day of the house passes in one hour, its brethren keep the hours of prayer, cook, copy books and tend the vines whether or not anyone is watching, and a guest who walks in finds them wherever they are at that moment.

It was built looking closely at the monasteries of Meteora in Thessaly, and the essays on this site set places in the house beside the real places and customs they answer to.

## What is invented

The Sky Monastery, its Broad Rock, its buildings, its brethren, their names, their books and its year of twenty-eight days are fiction. Nothing on this site speaks for the monasteries of Meteora or of Mount Athos, which are living communities. Each essay ends with a note of what in it is invented and what is taken from a source, and a claim that still wants a better source is marked in the text.

## The books

The essays quote two travellers at length. Both books are in the public domain and can be read whole at the Internet Archive.

- **Robert Curzon,** *Visits to Monasteries in the Levant* (London: John Murray, 1849). Chapters XIX and XX are his two days at Meteora. [Read it at the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/visitstomonaster00curz).
- **Athelstan Riley,** *Athos, or the Mountain of the Monks* (London: Longmans, Green, 1887), an account of his journey to Mount Athos in 1883. [Read it at the Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/athosormountaino00rile).

A few background facts (the founding of the Great Meteoron, the count of monasteries, the cutting of the steps in the 1920s, the World Heritage listing) are taken from the articles on [Meteora](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meteora) and its monasteries at Wikipedia. The essays that use them say so.

## The pictures

Views of the Sky Monastery are taken from the house itself. Every other picture comes from Wikimedia Commons and is listed here with its maker and its licence. Pictures under a Creative Commons licence are shown resized, and cropped by the page to fit; they are otherwise unaltered.

| Picture | By | Licence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| [Monastery of Barlaam, on one of the rocks of Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monastery_of_Barlaam%2C_on_one_of_the_rocks_of_Meteora_-_Hughes_Thomas_Smart_-_1820.jpg) | T. S. Hughes, 1820 | Public domain |
| [Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meteora%2C_lithograph_by_Louis_Dupr%C3%A9_-_1827.jpg) | Louis Dupré, lithograph, 1827 | Public domain |
| [View of Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_Meteora%2C_lithograph_from_edition_by_O_M_Von_Stackelberg.jpg) | After O. M. von Stackelberg, 19th century | Public domain |
| [View of the monastery of St Barlaam, at Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_the_monastery_of_St_Barlaam%2C_at_Meteora_-_Curzon_Robert_-_1849.jpg) | Robert Curzon, 1849 | Public domain |
| [The Great Monastery of Meteora, from the monastery of Barlaam](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:View_of_the_Great_Monastery_of_Meteora%2C_from_the_Monastery_of_Barlaam%2C_with_river_Peneus_in_the_distance_-_Curzon_Robert_-_1849.jpg) | Robert Curzon, 1849, from a drawing by Viscount Eastnor | Public domain |
| [Plan of the church at Barlaam](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plan_of_the_chapel_at_Varlaam_Monastery%2C_Meteora_-_Curzon_Robert_-_1849.jpg) | Robert Curzon, 1849 | Public domain |
| [Cliffs at Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cliffs_at_Meteora_-_Wordsworth_Christopher_-_1882.jpg) | Christopher Wordsworth, Greece, edition of 1882 | Public domain |
| [General view of Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:General_view_of_Meteora_-_Wordsworth_Christopher_-_1882.jpg) | Christopher Wordsworth, Greece, edition of 1882 | Public domain |
| [Monastery of Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monastery_of_Meteora_-_Wordsworth_Christopher_-_1882.jpg) | Christopher Wordsworth, Greece, edition of 1882 | Public domain |
| [The Transfiguration, wall painting at Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fresco_of_the_Transfiguration_-_Holy_Transfiguration%2C_Meteora.jpg) | Unknown painter | Public domain |
| [Wall painting in the monastery of the Great Meteoron](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_paintings_in_the_Monastery_of_Great_Meteoron_02.jpg) | Unknown Cretan painter | Public domain |
| [The vaults and the dome at Varlaam](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Megala_Meteora_12.jpg) | Nanosanchez, 2009 | Public domain |
| [Lines of the Codex Ebnerianus](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Codex_Ebnerianus_Prolog_J_1%2C_5b-10.JPG) | Facsimile of 1856 | Public domain |
| [The monastery of St Stephen, about 1890](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meteora%2C_Monastery_of_Agios_Stefanos%2C_ca_1890.jpg) | Unknown photographer | Public domain |
| [The skulls of the fathers at Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meteora_Skulls_-_panoramio.jpg) | P. León, 2008 | [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) |
| [A monk playing a semantron](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Monk_playing_a_semantron.jpg) | Rklawton, 2005 | [CC BY 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/) |
| [The oven in the old kitchen of the Great Meteoron](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wood-fired_oven_in_the_Old_Kitchen_%28cook_house%29.jpg) | Michael Nicht, 2013 | [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) |
| [The great barrel at Varlaam](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J26_607_Vala%C3%A1m%2C_Weinfass.jpg) | Falk2 | [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) |
| [A hermitage in a cave of the Bandovas rock](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:J26_541_%C3%81gios_Nik%C3%B3laos_B%C3%A1ndovas.jpg) | Falk2, 2016 | [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) |
| [Abandoned cave dwellings of the hermits of Meteora](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Verlassene_H%C3%B6hlenwohnungen_in_Meteora.jpg) | Levin Schilling, 2017 | [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) |
| [Varlaam](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Varlaam_Monastery%2C_Meteora.jpg) | Bernard Gagnon, 2011 | [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) |
| [The Holy Trinity](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Meteora_Agios_Triadas_IMG_7632.jpg) | Dido3, 2007 | [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) |
| [Roussanou](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roussanou_Monastery%2C_Meteora.jpg) | Bernard Gagnon, 2011 | [CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) |
| [St Nicholas Anapafsas](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Agios_Nikolaos_Anapafsa.jpg) | Takeaway | [CC BY-SA 3.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/) |

## For readers that are not people

Every page of this site is also served as plain Markdown: add `index.md` to a page's address, or ask for it with `Accept: text/markdown`. A list of the pages is at [/llms.txt](https://skymonastery.com/llms.txt), the whole site in one file at [/llms-full.txt](https://skymonastery.com/llms-full.txt), and what is happening in the house at this moment at [/now.md](https://skymonastery.com/now.md).

## The gate is open. The porter keeps water and bread at his window.

[Walk in ›](https://skymonastery.com/walk/)

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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.

This page: https://skymonastery.com/sources/ · All pages: https://skymonastery.com/llms.txt · Walk into the Sky Monastery: https://skymonastery.com/walk/