Göreme Open Air Museum

In a small side valley just outside the village of Göreme, among the cones and pinnacles of soft volcanic tuff that give Cappadocia its fairy-chimney landscape, lies a whole monastic settlement carved into the rock. What is now called the Göreme Open Air Museum is a cluster of more than a dozen churches and chapels, refectories and living quarters hollowed out of the cliffs and cones, and inside several of them survive some of the finest Byzantine wall paintings anywhere, most of them from the tenth to the twelfth centuries.

The churches are small, and the pleasure is in the detail. The Dark Church, Karanlık Kilise, dates from the end of the eleventh century; because only a sliver of daylight reached it, its paintings — the Baptism, the Transfiguration, the Last Supper, the Crucifixion — have kept an intensity of colour that is startling after the faded walls elsewhere, and it requires a separate ticket. The Apple Church, Elmalı Kilise, is a tiny cross-shaped church with a cluster of small domes on four columns. The Snake Church, Yılanlı Kilise, is named for its scene of Saint George fighting a dragon-like serpent, and also shows Constantine and his mother Helena holding the True Cross. In the Sandal Church, Çarıklı Kilise, a pair of footprints painted beneath one scene gives it its name, and the Church of Saint Barbara, from the late eleventh century, shows the soldier saints George and Theodore.

Just outside the main enclosure is the Tokalı Kilise, the Buckle Church — the largest and oldest church of the group. Its painted narrative of the life of Christ, in long bands on a ground of deep blue made from lapis lazuli, belongs to the tenth century and is among the grandest cycles of Byzantine painting to survive in Anatolia. Do not skip it.

The site was opened to visitors in 1967 and is part of the Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia, inscribed by UNESCO in 1985 for both its cultural and natural value. The valley is at its best early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when the crowds thin and the light on the tuff turns warm.

Getting there

The museum lies about 1–2 km outside Göreme village and about 6 km from Ürgüp, and is an easy walk or short drive from either. The nearest airport is Nevşehir Kapadokya Airport (NAV), about 31 km away, with transfers to the Göreme area.