Guide
The Porsuk — Tembris — valley is one of the valleys of Mountainous Phrygia that lie within Eskişehir, running along the Porsuk river from the reservoir to the city. Rock settlements and monuments of the Phrygian, Roman and Byzantine periods can be seen on the volcanic tuff outcrops around the villages of Kızılinler, Gökçekısık, Uluçayır, Yenisofça and İncesu.
Çatalkaya, at Uluçayır, takes its name from the monumental rock cut in the shape of a fork on a low hill; it is also known as Keskaya. The Phrygians dressed the rock and cut a deep vertical channel down its middle. On another mass east of it, called Sivrikaya or Uzunkaya, there is a small Phrygian rock monument. At Gökçekısık, on the rocky plateau rising right beside the village, there are large Phrygian rock-cut spaces.
South-west of Yenisofça, chamber tombs, trough graves and rock-cut rooms of the Roman and Byzantine periods are cut into low rock masses. In the village itself, on the north face of the rocky hill called Kilisekaya looking toward the Porsuk, there is a Phrygian rock monument with chamber tombs and multi-storey Byzantine rock-cut spaces linked to one another by stepped passages.
The most important rock structure here is a tomb of the late Hellenistic period. Its front is monumental: it reproduces, cut into the rock, the facade of a Doric temple with its cornice and triangular pediment carried on two columns. Behind the entrance hall are two burial chambers, each entered through its own door. This tomb went on being used in the Roman and Byzantine periods, with additions and alterations.
