Voyage to one of Anatolia's oldest ports
Well placed on the historic Silk Road, Trabzon was a major trade center for centuries, attracting travelers and influenced by many religions, languages, and cultures.
Aya Sofya is a striking Byzantine church similarly influenced, having morphed into a mosque, and later a museum, where impressive frescoes still decorate its walls.
Perched dramatically on a narrow ledge of a sheer cliff in the nearby forest, is the rock-hewn Sümela Monastery, where according to legend two Athenian priests found a miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary in a cave. The cave became a Rock Church, and the monastery grew around it, expanding over the centuries.
