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Monastery · Meteora, Thessaly

Roussanou Monastery

Ιερά Μονή Ρουσάνου · Ιερά Μονή Ρουσάνου - Αγίας Βαρβάρας

Roussanou is the Holy Monastery of Roussanou and St Barbara, a working Orthodox convent on a sheer rock of Meteora in the Municipality of Meteora, Thessaly, beside the road from Kalambaka and Kastraki to the monasteries.

Why go

The Holy Monastery of Roussanou and St Barbara is built on a vertical rock about 60 m high whose top its buildings cover entirely, according to the Holy Metropolis of Stagoi and Meteora. The Metropolis page names the hieromonks Ioasaph and Maximos from Ioannina as its founders, who obtained permission to settle on the rock between 1527 and 1529; Visit Greece dates the foundation to 1529, on the ruins of earlier structures. The same Metropolis page says steps and two small iron bridges leading to the entrance were built in 1930 to replace older wooden ones, and that the monastery became a convent on 17 October 1988. Visit Greece says the church's frescoes belong to the Cretan School and that St Barbara is honoured in the chapel named after her. The Municipality of Meteora lists a winter and a summer timetable and a weekly closing day for the convent; the convent's own website could not be opened.

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