The Saint Barbara or Rousanou Monastery is one of the six functioning monasteries that remain in Meteora, but in its heyday there were as many as 24 orthodox monasteries in the area. Meteora has been a spiritual retreat for hermits for at least the last thousand years, but most of the monasteries were founded from the 15th century, when Greece fell into the oppressive Ottoman dominion. Monks found refuge atop the rocks, which seemed the most improbable place to build a monastery, since they could only be reached by climbing articulated removable ladders. Today, the monasteries can be reached via bridges and steps hewn out of the rock, but until the 1920s, provisions and the monks themselves were hauled up in nets on a windlass.