Ancient City of Kilistra (Gökyurt)

📖 The Story

An important settlement in Roman-Byzantine times, Kilistra offers a striking landscape of churches, tombs and a water system cut into tufa rock. It lies on a route visited by Saint Paul in the earliest years of Christianity. With its cross-plan rock church and hidden living quarters, it is virtually an open-air museum.

Though its rock fabric recalls Cappadocia, Kilistra keeps a quiet identity of its own with vineyard houses, wine presses and dovecotes. The cross-plan Sümbül chapel carved from a single rock and refuges with hidden passages tell of early Christianity's concealed life.