Home » Posts tagged 'Travel'
New York, February 2004: On my way back to Dublin, I stopped in New York… There had been a blizzard but the Empire State beckoned… Completed in 1931 in distinctive Art Deco style- its roof height at 381 meters (with antenna included 443.2m high)- it’s still one of the highest buildings on the planet- at number 22.
Meteora, Greece, April 2003: Metéora, literally translates from Greek as “suspended in the air” or “in the heavens above” – it’s obvious as to why… It is one of the largest and most important complexes of Eastern Orthodox monasteries in Greece, second only to Mount Athos.
This was my first visit to this beautiful and surreal place, near the end of a hectic six week circuit around Greece and Turkey. I climbed and wandered around for hours exploring the area and visited a couple of the monasteries. The monasteries are built on natural sandstone rock pillars at the northwestern edge of the Plain of Thessaly, near the Pineios river and Pindus mountains in central Greece. They were originally created by hermetic monks seeking seclusion and protection.
When Turkish raiders started invading Greece in the 14th century, the monks found the inaccessible rock pillars of Meteora to be an ideal refuge. Many of the pinnacles are well in excess of 300 meters high…
The monastery of the Holy Trinity (above) was used as a location for the finale of the 1981 James Bond film, For Your Eyes Only.
I visited this monastery, including the lift room where the monks and supplies were hauled up and down…
Access to the monasteries was deliberately difficult, requiring either long ladders lashed together or large nets used to haul up both goods and people.
This required quite literally a leap of faith – the ropes were replaced, so the story goes, only “when the Lord let them break”.
Metéora is included on the UNESCO World Heritage list under criteria I, II, IV, V and VII.
Vienna, Austria, Sept 2001.
Beaufort Castle, Lebanon, November 2005: The Crusader fortress of Beaufort Castle- constructed in the 12th century- has been the focus for countless battles and the home of many occupiers over the centuries…
Beaufort (French for “beautiful fortress”) sits atop a 300 meter cliff which declines steeply to the Litani River. Its commanding location, with views over of much of southern Lebanon and northern Israel, is still of strategic value today.
In fact, Beaufort is one of the few cases where a medieval fortress has also proven to be of strategic military value, in the age of modern warfare…
When I visited in late 2005 the place was in ruins- but there was no mistake who held the high ground here…
Hezbollah’s AK47 emblazoned flag fluttered in the breeze- along with their allies and former rivals, AMAL.
Seven months later… the IDF once again invaded Lebanon- blitzing their way up to Beirut- laying south Lebanon to waste and cluster bombs in the July War …
The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) held the castle from the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in the mid 1970′s, untill the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) finally evicted the PLO and occupied and fortified Beaufort- controlling south Lebanon for the next two decades…
Upon their withdrawl in 2000, the IDF set explosives and destroyed most of the structure. In 2007 an Israeli film- Beaufort- was released about an IDF unit stationed at the fortress…
Aleppo, Syria, November 2005: With the escalating conflict in Syria spreading to the country’s largest city, Aleppo, it’s about time I made a post about this ancient city. Also, over the coming weeks and months I will be publishing more images and stories from the Middle East in general, as it continues to fracture and change…
The Citadel of Aleppo is considered to be one of the largest and oldest castles in the world. Usage of the Citadel hill dates back to at least the 3rd millenium BC, around the same time as the construction of the Pyramid’s of Giza.
Aleppo, contrary to many reports, is the most populous city in Syria with just over two million inhabitants. Like the slightly smaller capital Damascus, it is also one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.
The Citadel is certainly one of the most imposing structures I’ve visited. The mound the Citadel sits on is approximately 450m long by 320 meters wide, with a 22m deep (30 meter wide) moat surrounding it. It has changed hands many times over the millenia: Seleucid, Roman/Byzantium, Zengid and Ayyubid, Mongol and Mamluk; Ottoman…
I didn’t explore the Citadel for very long as I felt somewhat paranoid- like I was being followed… Maybe my instincts were correct, as the secret police (Mukhabarat) and their informants were everywhere- as I would find out later on from some fellow travellers…
