Sumela Monastery

Sumela Monastery clings to a sheer cliff in the Pontic Mountains south of Trebizond, above the Altındere valley. Tradition places its foundation around 386 by two Athenian monks, Barnabas and Sophronios; it was famed for an icon of the Theotokos believed to have been painted by the Apostle Luke.

The Byzantine general Belisarius restored and enlarged it in the sixth century on Justinian's orders. The monastery took its present form in the thirteenth century, and Emperor Alexios III, whom legend says the Virgin saved from a storm, confirmed its freedom and tax exemptions in 1365.

After the Ottoman conquest of Trebizond in 1461, Mehmed II took the monastery under his protection and later sultans renewed its privileges. From 1682 it housed the Phrontisterion of Trapezous, a Greek school of the Black Sea coast; the monastery drew monks and pilgrims for centuries.