Selime Monastery
"I've been in cathedrals smaller than this monastery's main hall, and someone carved it out of a single mountain."
A cathedral-sized monastery carved entirely into a single rock face at the northern mouth of Ihlara Valley, its cavernous halls big enough to feel like architecture rather than caves.
Selime Monastery sits at the point where Ihlara Valley opens back out into flat farmland, and it announces itself from a distance — a whole cliff face pockmarked with openings, staircases, and chimney holes, big enough that from the road it can be mistaken for a natural rock formation rather than the largest religious complex in Cappadocia. Up close, the scale becomes obvious and slightly disorienting. This wasn’t a hermit’s cell or a modest chapel; monks carved out a cathedral-sized hall with a vaulted ceiling, a kitchen with a soot-blackened chimney flue still cut into the rock, stables large enough for animals, and sleeping quarters stacked across several levels, all connected by internal staircases climbing straight up through the stone.
I spent close to two hours just working my way upward through the complex, and the sensation never stopped feeling slightly vertiginous — passages open suddenly onto sheer drops, ceilings soar unexpectedly into what functions as a nave, and then a tunnel narrows back down to something barely shoulder-width. Local guides will tell you, usually with a knowing grin, that Selime’s otherworldly interior was used as a filming location for a Star Wars sequel; I couldn’t confirm that claim to my own satisfaction and treat it as regional folklore, but standing in the cavernous main hall with light falling through carved openings high overhead, I understood immediately why the story sticks.
The monastery is thought to date from between the eighth and thirteenth centuries and likely served as a training center for monks before they dispersed to smaller hermitages throughout the valley, which would explain why it needed a kitchen and stables on this scale. From the topmost terraces, the view opens out over the mouth of Ihlara Valley and the Melendiz River winding through poplar trees far below — one of the better rewards in Cappadocia for a climb that leaves your legs mildly unsteady.
When to go: Visit at the end of an Ihlara Valley walk if you’re coming from the south, since Selime marks the valley’s northern trailhead. Mornings are cooler for the climb, which involves narrow stone stairs without much handrail.