The rock-cut church
Hewn into the hillside, with inscriptions and portraits of Alexios III, his wife and his mother from the days of the Empire of Trebizond.
Bertramz — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0 · Dosseman — CC BY-SA 4.0
A few minutes below the famous Boztepe terrace, a high stone wall beside the road hides a convent that has been standing for more than six centuries. Locals call it Kızlar Manastırı, the «Girls' Monastery», because it housed nuns, and it dates from the reign of Alexios III, ruler of the small Empire of Trebizond that outlasted Constantinople itself by eight years, falling only in 1461. What makes it worth a stop is not its size, which is genuinely modest, but the church cut straight into the rock, whose inscriptions and portraits name Alexios, his wife Theodora and his mother Irene: rare images of that dynasty. The complex climbs two terraces up the hillside, and most of what you see today, the cells and arcades, comes from a nineteenth-century rebuilding rather than the Byzantine period. Abandoned for decades after the Greek population left Trabzon, it was restored by the Ministry of Culture between 2014 and 2018 and is now run by the metropolitan municipality as a ticketed site. The actual visit is short: the rock church, a small chapel by the entrance, the courtyard, and then the view over the wall to the city and the Black Sea, which is honestly half the point. Allow thirty to forty-five minutes and treat it as a stop on the way up to Boztepe rather than an outing in itself; if you have come to Trabzon for Uzungöl and Sumela, the monastery may feel smaller than the photographs suggest. Stone stairs between the terraces and an uneven courtyard make it awkward with a pushchair or for anyone who finds climbing hard, and children tend to lose interest after a quarter of an hour. The best light is late afternoon before closing, when the sun slants across the bay and the crowds have thinned. Admission is 240 TL for foreign visitors (half that for Turkish citizens), doors open from nine in the morning to seven in the evening, and no booking is needed. Driving up the Boztepe road is straightforward, and any taxi from the main square knows it by its Turkish name.
Hewn into the hillside, with inscriptions and portraits of Alexios III, his wife and his mother from the days of the Empire of Trebizond.
Trabzon, its bay and the Black Sea laid out below, at their best just before sunset.
It sits on the same road as the famous Boztepe terrace, so combine the two in one trip.
Boztepe district, Ortahisar, Trabzon
Boztepe HillLong before anyone climbed Boztepe for the view, it was a place of worship. The 5 min walk
Trabzon Museum (Kostaki Mansion)The best exhibit in Trabzon Museum is the building it lives in. A Greek banker, 9 min walk
Trabzon Castle (City Walls)Do not go looking for a castle. What Trabzon calls its kale is really a whole ne12 min walk
Kanuni House (Suleiman the Magnificent Museum)The most celebrated of the Ottoman sultans was not born in Istanbul but here in 14 min walk
Gülbahar Hatun MosqueA sultan conquers Egypt and Syria and routs the Safavids, then builds a mosque f15 min walkDo not compare them; Sumela clings to a cliff and is far larger, while Kızlar is a small convent inside the city that you finish in under an hour. See it because you are on your way up to the Boztepe viewpoint, not instead of Sumela.
Possible but not comfortable: there are stone stairs between the terraces and uneven ground, so leave the pushchair in the car and carry a small child. Children get bored quickly, so keep it short and head up to the Boztepe tea garden afterwards.
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