Vazelon Monastery

Vazelon Monastery was built in the Pontic Mountains, about forty kilometres south of Trebizond, in the Maçka valley. Dedicated to John the Baptist, it was founded in Roman times, around 270 or 317, making it one of Anatolia's oldest monasteries.

In the sixth century Sassanid raiders sacked it and killed its monks; in 565 Emperor Justinian I ordered it repaired. After the Fourth Crusade shattered Byzantium in 1204, the emperors of Trebizond endowed Vazelon, and its surviving buildings date from a rebuilding of 1410.

The monastery held authority over surrounding villages, and its church was decorated with frescoes of Heaven, Hell and the Last Judgement. Through the Ottoman conquest of 1461 and the centuries that followed, Vazelon remained a centre of Greek Orthodox worship, and its archive became a source for the history of Byzantium and Trebizond.