Sumela Monastery

Turkey's Ministry of Culture gives the standard account: the name derives from the Greek melas (black), after the ancient name of Mount Karadağ, so Stou Mela means in Mela. Tradition attributes the first foundations to the reign of Theodosius I (375-395), when two priests from Athens, Barnabas and Sophronios, built a wall before the cave where an icon of the Panagia Soumela, believed to have been painted by Saint Luke, was said to have been found; the ministry presents this as belief and legend, not established history. Alexios III (1349-1390) of the Empire of Trebizond emerges from the frescoes as the principal patron, and after the Ottoman conquest, edicts including one from Mehmet the Conqueror preserved the monastery's rights. After the 1923 population exchange the monastery was evacuated; icons went to the Benaki Museum in Athens following the 1931 Venizelos-Inönü meeting, and a new Sumela monastery was founded in Veria, Greece, in 1952.

It was a major pilgrimage destination for the Black Sea Greeks, known for its healing sacred spring (ayazma), and the ministry describes the complex's rock church, chapels, library, aqueducts, and fresco cycles spanning the Trebizond and eighteenth-century renewal periods. A three-and-a-half-year restoration begun in 2015 cleared about 4,000 tonnes of rock and reopened access; the site sits on UNESCO's Tentative List. In June 2026, after renewed rockfall-safety works, the monastery reopened to visitors on June 25, with further restoration continuing (Hürriyet Daily News; Culture and Tourism Ministry statement). An annual liturgy is held on August 15. It is a state-run museum in Turkey, and for displaced Pontic Greek Orthodox communities it is also a returned pilgrimage place whose liturgy happens once a year by arrangement.

Visiting

Sümela Manastırı (muze.gov.tr). Open daily 08:00-17:00, ticket office until 16:30. Müzekart is valid for Turkish citizens. Foreign-visitor admission was reported around €20 in 2026 plus a separate Altındere National Park fee at the park road, figures not verified against the museum's official pricing; check muze.gov.tr before travel. Winter weather can restrict access.

Photo: Bjørn Christian Tørrissen, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons ([source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sumela_From_Across_Valley.JPG))