Sign up for CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter, Unlocking the World. Get destination news, plus the latest information on aviation, food and drink, and accommodation.
Trabzon, Türkiye
—
If its ancient walls could talk, Sumera Monastery in eastern Türkiye would have quite a few stories to tell.
Founded by the earliest Christians to arrive on the Black Sea coast in the 4th century AD, the shrine has seen the rise of the Roman Empire into the Byzantine era, the rise of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey’s struggle for independence after World War I, decades of vandalism and neglect, and its miraculous modern-day revival.
Even more fascinating than Sumera’s turbulent history is that it’s a place that looks like it was generated by artificial intelligence or computer graphics rather than a real place. The complex includes a chapel, a courtyard, a library, living quarters, a bell tower, an aqueduct, and a sacred spring surrounded by stones perched precariously on a rock ledge some 1,000 feet (300 meters) above a wooded river valley in the Pontic Alps.
Every day, thousands of visitors (some religious pilgrims, but most drawn by the gravity-defying splendor of early Christian frescoes and architecture) make their way to the monastery through the cobblestone streets. Another attraction is the fact that Sumera is on UNESCO’s Tentative List of World Heritage Sites.
Now a state museum rather than an active religious community, the monastery has been meticulously restored over the years to make it a safe place for tourists and to reduce damage from fires, treasure hunters, vandals, and disrespectful visitors.
“We have always had problems with falling rocks,” says Levent Arniak, Trabzon province’s curator of museums and monuments. “To prevent damage to the building or harm to visitors, we had an industrial climber secure the cliff.” Hanging in the air, the climbers used steel cables and giant metal stakes to attach steel mesh nets and barriers to the rock face that towers above the monastery.
Ongoing restoration work has uncovered unexpected treasures, including a secret tunnel leading to an undiscovered chapel that may have been used as an observation post to protect the monastery. Inside the small church, archaeologists discovered dramatic frescoes depicting heaven and hell, life and death.
Renewal of the monastery’s stunning frescoes is underway. This project involves meticulous and labor-intensive work by art restoration experts. During the summer months, when it is dry enough to carry out the delicate work, visitors can see restorers up close removing graffiti and other damage sustained after the abbey was deserted and unprotected from the 1920s to the 1960s.
“For many years, there was not enough maintenance here and there was a lot of vandalism,” restorer Senol Aktaş said during a break from work on an 18th-century fresco depicting the Virgin Mary conversing with an angel on the facade of Sumela’s great rock church. “People wrote their names and other things all over the frescoes. We are trying to remove them by painting over the graffiti in the same style and colors that the original artist used.”
The frescoes on the outside may be impressive, but they pale in comparison to the even older paintings on the inside. Behind its façade, the church disappears into a large cave filled with vivid images created in the 13th century. Large portraits of Jesus and the Virgin Mary stare from the ceiling, and walls are dedicated to angels, apostles, and saints, including a graphic depiction of St. Ignatius being torn apart by lions in the Roman arena.
The painted eyes are hollowed out in many of the lower frescoes, easily accessible to human hands. Some claim the image was deliberately defaced by Muslims.
But Oznur Doxoz, who has guided visitors to Sumela since the 1980s when it first opened to the public, says there is another possible explanation. “Even for Muslims, the Virgin Mary is a saint. So people who lived around here would come and scratch their faces, especially their eyes, boil bits of paint, and drink this water, thinking it would bless them. I don’t know if this story is true, but that’s what people say.”
The legendary and historical roots of Sumera
On the other hand, no one knows whether the story of the origin of the monastery is true or just a myth.
Legend has it that Sumera’s roots date back to 386 AD, when it was miraculously discovered by the Greek monks Barnabas and Sophronios. They were drawn to the remote region by a vision in which the Virgin Mary told them of an icon painted by the Apostle Luke hidden somewhere in the Pontic Alps. The monks eventually discovered a holy relic, a dark portrait of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus, in the cave that would later house the Rock Church, and named it Panagia Sumera.
This cave has been a place of pilgrimage for hundreds of years. It wasn’t until the 13th century that the monastery as we know it today was founded by Orthodox monks during the last Christian kingdoms ruling the area. It continued to prosper under the Ottoman Empire, which took control of the region in 1461.
Although the Ottoman Empire was Muslim, it granted its subjects a surprising degree of religious freedom as long as they remained loyal to the emperor.
“Sometimes churches were turned into mosques, like Hagia Sophia in Istanbul,” Alniak explains. “But for the most part they left their religion to the Christians,” and also supported some of the more important Christian sites. “The sultans considered Sumela a sacred place and helped the monastery by giving donations and more land to the monks,” he added.
Sumela is popular with Christian and Muslim pilgrims and had an active Greek Orthodox monastery until the early 20th century. After the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, the empire’s ethnic Turks and Greeks fought a civil war that ended in 1923, with large-scale population exchanges between the Asian and European parts of the former empire.
Many Greeks living in the Pontic Alps and the nearby Black Sea coast chose to emigrate to Greece, including the monks of Sumera Monastery. Fearing theft during their trip to Greece, the monks buried the monastery’s treasures in a secret location in the Altinderre Valley, hoping that they could be retrieved at some point in the future.
Abandoned monasteries became magnets for treasure hunters looking for these valuable items. Panagia Sumera was eventually recovered by monks and is now kept at the Neas Mera Monastery in northern Greece. However, some artifacts were smuggled out of Türkiye and are now housed in museums and private collections around the world.
By the 1970s, the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism launched the first efforts to preserve and restore Sumela as a national treasure. Over the next few decades, access was improved to facilitate visits by tourists and pilgrims.
The turning point in the monastery’s revival came on August 15, 2010, the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, when the Archbishop of Constantinople held an Orthodox service in Sumela for the first time in 88 years. This ritual is now repeated every August 15th, but believers are allowed to pray in the monastery’s chapel all year round.
Sumela Monastery is located in Altundere Valley National Park, about an hour’s drive south of Trabzon, a resort city on Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coast.
Visitors can drive themselves or join guided van or minibus tours to the monastery offered by Trabzon travel agencies. From the parking lot, a shuttle bus takes visitors to the bottom of the steep slope and finally up the stairs that lead to the monastery’s entrance.
Entrance fee to the site is 20 euros. The monastery is open daily from 8am to 6pm. A short film about the renovation will be shown in one of the old monks’ cells. Expect to spend 1-2 hours exploring the site.
Just outside the entrance gate is a small shop selling snacks and souvenirs, vending machines, outdoor tables, and toilets.
Visitors should wear sturdy shoes and dress appropriately for the weather. In the warm season there is a possibility of rain, and in the winter there is a possibility of snow.
Trabzon is approximately 13 hours by car from Istanbul, but less than 2 hours by plane. Turkish Airlines operates multiple flights a day between Istanbul and Trabzon.
The village of Kochandere has the closest accommodation to the monastery, including the 3-star Sumera Holiday Hotel. Trabzon offers a wide range of accommodation possibilities, including the seaside Ramada Plaza and the hilltop Radisson Blu.
