Guide
Sümbüllü Church is cut into the rock in the Ihlara valley, and what makes it stand out among the valley's many rock churches is its facade. The monastery was carved on two levels: the church below, and above it a barrel-vaulted room reached by a stair and running parallel to the cliff face. The lower part of the facade was left roughly worked, but the upper part was divided by wall piers into five bays, each given a round-arched doorway or a blind niche, and the whole is finished at the top by a carefully cut band of blind arcading.
The church itself is a single nave on a long rectangular plan, with a shallow dome hollowed out of the flat ceiling at the east end. Side rooms to the north and south each end in an apse; the southern one has a flat ceiling, the northern a barrel vault. The narthex at the west opens into both the church and the southern side room. The paintings are dated to between the tenth and twelfth centuries. In the apse semidome the Virgin appears as Blachernitissa between Michael and Gabriel, with bishops in the register below; the Annunciation is on the south wall of the southern room and the Dormition in its apse; the Presentation in the Temple is in the apse of the northern room; and in the dome of the main space is Christ Pantokrator, with the Three Hebrews in the Furnace and other saints on the south wall. The church is inside the Ihlara valley, 35 km from central Aksaray, with hourly public transport from the city to Ihlara town.
