· We have come further east along the Black Sea to the port of Trabzon from which we want to visit the Sumela Monastery. Said to date from the 6thC and one of many Byzantine-era monasteries built high in the hills south of Trabzon, it remained an active Greek Orthodox monastery until the early 20thC.
· We set out by bus in the early morning, climbing steeply into forested hills, then up through the narrow Altindere River gorge where we begin to see snow-capped mountains not far above. It seems that whichever way you see the monastery from a distance – from the cliffside along the valley as we did, or from above as one photo reveals – the impression is of an impossibly constructed set of buildings: a façade of several-storey buildings, as well as an aqueduct, somehow glued to a high 90 degree rock face so large that the buildings, by no means small, appear like miniatures from a distance. We stare wide-eyed on the first look. It invites disbelieve, a sense of the marvelous. The precipitous location is all about safety, security.
· As we climb up and in behind the façade, we find ourselves overlooking a small plaza set into a great open hollow or grotto on the Cliffside. Here there are various buildings including the main chapel with 9th to 19thC frescoes on its exterior and inner walls and ceiling, many defaced but many elements still intact. I find my eye not much interested in the main iconographic figures, including a Black Virgin, but enjoying far more what might have been considered the sideshow: olives on branches, blossoming flowers, two rearing, snorting horses (with fighting riders), the beaded sleeves and graying hair of a woman holding a candle, flying angel-people looking blessed out as they float about, another group of music-making angels, a fine beaded decanter. I like to imagine the painters’ attention to those lively olives, branches and leaves and those beaded sleeves and that woman’s pulled back graying hair … the attachment of those naturalistic details and figures and some dimension of the sensibility that guided them to mortal, creaturely life at the edges of all that immortality and lesson-teaching.
· Later we walk down a steep switched back forested path to the valley floor where we find a quiet table beside the river and pull out (as is often our routine) a lunch of bread, cheese, olives and cucumber pieced together from our abundant pension breakfasts. High above through the vines and pine trees, the monastery clings to the cliffside in defiance of gravity.
· We set out by bus in the early morning, climbing steeply into forested hills, then up through the narrow Altindere River gorge where we begin to see snow-capped mountains not far above. It seems that whichever way you see the monastery from a distance – from the cliffside along the valley as we did, or from above as one photo reveals – the impression is of an impossibly constructed set of buildings: a façade of several-storey buildings, as well as an aqueduct, somehow glued to a high 90 degree rock face so large that the buildings, by no means small, appear like miniatures from a distance. We stare wide-eyed on the first look. It invites disbelieve, a sense of the marvelous. The precipitous location is all about safety, security.
· As we climb up and in behind the façade, we find ourselves overlooking a small plaza set into a great open hollow or grotto on the Cliffside. Here there are various buildings including the main chapel with 9th to 19thC frescoes on its exterior and inner walls and ceiling, many defaced but many elements still intact. I find my eye not much interested in the main iconographic figures, including a Black Virgin, but enjoying far more what might have been considered the sideshow: olives on branches, blossoming flowers, two rearing, snorting horses (with fighting riders), the beaded sleeves and graying hair of a woman holding a candle, flying angel-people looking blessed out as they float about, another group of music-making angels, a fine beaded decanter. I like to imagine the painters’ attention to those lively olives, branches and leaves and those beaded sleeves and that woman’s pulled back graying hair … the attachment of those naturalistic details and figures and some dimension of the sensibility that guided them to mortal, creaturely life at the edges of all that immortality and lesson-teaching.
· Later we walk down a steep switched back forested path to the valley floor where we find a quiet table beside the river and pull out (as is often our routine) a lunch of bread, cheese, olives and cucumber pieced together from our abundant pension breakfasts. High above through the vines and pine trees, the monastery clings to the cliffside in defiance of gravity.
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