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Göreme Open-Air Museum
Göreme Open-Air Museum is the open-air monastic valley where post-Iconoclastic figurative frescoes are concentrated in the tuff.
The Göreme Open-Air Museum page lists the Nuns’ and Monks’ monasteries with the churches of Basil, Elmalı, Barbara, the Snake, the Malta Crusaders, the Dark Church, Catherine, Çarıklı and Tokalı on one site. It describes a monastic life from the fourth century through the thirteenth, with a church, chapel or refectory cut into almost every rock block and paintings applied either straight onto the stone or in fresco-secco.
Why visit
Visit Göreme in the morning to read the post-Iconoclastic narrative painting in the rock chapels, leaving extra time because the Dark Church is published as its own section.
Enter Göreme when the desk opens at 08:00, before tour groups stack up in front of the Elmalı and Çarıklı niches.
