Sümela Manastırı

Also known as Sümela Monastery

Year

386

Style

Byzantine

Type

monastery

Sümela Monastery clings to a vertical cliff face on Karadağ above the Altındere valley south of Trabzon. The visible building mass was largely constructed between the 13th and 19th centuries on a site whose founding tradition reaches back…

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Timeline

550
Addition
Tradition records a repair and enlargement of the early cave monastery by General Belisarios on the order of Emperor Justinian.
1250
Trapezuntine reconstruction
The Trapezuntine Empire sponsored major building campaigns that gave Sumela its current scale, with the dominant surviving complex of cells, chapels, and frescoes dating from the 13th century onward.
1349
Addition
Alexios III Komnenos endowed and extended the monastery during his reign as Emperor of Trebizond, supporting the building campaign that gave Sümela its imperial scale.
1860
Cliff balcony block
A five-storey balcony-fronted block of monk and guest rooms was added across the cliff face, defining the painted facade visible today.
2015-2020
Restoration
The Ministry of Culture and Tourism completed cliff-slope stabilisation and phased restoration, reopening the monastery to visitors in 2020.