08/07/2026
Perhaps the most popular tourist attraction in Turkey's Black Sea region, the stunning Sümela Monastery is a 1600-year-old Orthodox mountaintop monastery, built on the side of Karadag Mountain, located in the Altindag Valley of Trabzon's Macka district. It is not known when the monastery was founded, but the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism places the date around AD 386, during the reign of the emperor Theodosius I (375– 395). According to William Miller, two Athenian monks named Barnabas and Sophronios founded the monastery.
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