Sumela Monastery, Zigana & Hamsikoy Village Tour

Highlights of the Sumela Monastery, Zigana & Hamsikoy Village Tour

• Sumela Monastery — the spectacular cliff-hanging Greek Orthodox monastery carved into the sheer rock face of the Pontic Mountains
• Altindere National Park — the lush, forested valley and rushing streams that frame the approach to the monastery
• St. Barbara Chapel & the Rock Church — centuries-old frescoes, the holy spring and the monks' cells deep inside the mountain
• Zigana Pass (2050 m) — one of the great passes of the historic Silk Road, with sweeping Black Sea mountain views
• Hamsikoy Village — the pretty Black Sea highland village famous for its creamy rice pudding (sutlac)

This full-day Sumela Monastery tour from Trabzon is the perfect daily excursion for anyone who wants to pair dramatic mountain scenery with living Byzantine history. Rising some 300 metres above the floor of the Altindere valley, Sumela Monastery seems to grow straight out of the cliff, its whitewashed walls and red-tiled roofs clinging to the rock since the 4th century. On this Trabzon day tour you follow a shaded forest path up through Altindere National Park, pass the little St. Barbara Chapel, and step inside the main rock church to admire the vivid frescoes, the stone stairways, the old library and the sacred spring that made Sumela a place of pilgrimage for more than 1,600 years.

The day is about more than the monastery alone. Climbing away from Trabzon, this daily excursion crosses the Zigana Pass, where caravans once carried silk and spices over the mountains at 2,050 metres above sea level; today it rewards travellers with panoramic views of pine-clad peaks and drifting cloud. Before returning you break in Hamsikoy, a tidy highland village tucked into a green valley and celebrated across Turkey for its rice pudding — the ideal spot to slow down, taste a local speciality and breathe the cool mountain air.

With a professional English-speaking guide and comfortable air-conditioned transport, this Sumela, Zigana and Hamsikoy day trip turns the highlights of the Eastern Black Sea into one relaxed, well-paced day out from Trabzon. It is an easy, rewarding daily tour for history lovers, photographers and anyone who simply wants to see why this corner of Turkey is so special.