Picture Day Friday: Sumela Monastery, Turkey

Sumela Monastery is a Greek Orthodox monastery devoted to the Virgin Mary at Melá Mountain in the Trabzon province of Turkey. Those mountainsides are steep and high: nearly 3,900 vertical feet. I wonder how the monks managed to climb up from the village with their supplies.

According to Wikipedia, the monastery was founded in AD 386 during the reign of the Emperor Theodosius I (375 - 395). Despite it falling into disrepair and disuse many times, it's been restored and rebuilt many times over. Currently, it's a big tourist attraction in that ancient region of Trabzon.

Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast of northeastern Turkey, has been on the world map since 700 BCE. It was a major port city on the Silk Route and a gateway to Iran and the Caucasus region.


["Sumela From Across Valley" by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen (own work http://bjornfree.com/galleries.html). Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons.]