The Katskhi Pillar (Chiatura /Georgia)

The Katskhi Pillar is a 130 feet high limestone monolith outside of Chiatura, Georgia. Also called the Pillar of Life by locals it symbolizes the True Cross and is surrounded by legends. On top is a small church built by monks in the 9th or 10th century, who then abandoned it around 1300. Then it remained unclimbed and unsurveyed until 1944.
Today visitors get to the top by climbing a 130 foot ladder but no one knows for sure how the monks got to the top of the pillar or indeed how they carried the building materials up thousands of years ago.