Sümela Monastery

Sümela Monastery is a dramatic Orthodox Christian monastic complex built against a steep cliff in the Altındere Valley near Maçka, Trabzon Province. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, it combines a rock church, chapels, monastic rooms, guest facilities, water structures and layers of wall painting. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism records a traditional foundation story involving the monks Barnabas and Sophronios in the fourth century; that early origin is treated here as monastic tradition rather than securely demonstrated archaeology.

The surviving complex is much better documented from the medieval Empire of Trebizond, especially from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when rulers including Alexios III supported it. Sümela continued to receive protection and additions under Ottoman rule, with substantial rebuilding and new fresco decoration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

It has been on Türkiye’s UNESCO Tentative List since 2000. Today the monastery is primarily a heritage site, but it remains highly significant to Orthodox Christian memory and has also hosted authorized religious services on selected occasions. Reaching the monument involves entering the mountainous Altındere setting and a final pedestrian approach, which is part of the site’s distinctive experience.