One of the older churches in the valley, with frescoes from the 9th and 10th centuries — the period when local artists were still working in an East Anatolian style strongly influenced by Coptic and Syrian models, before classical Byzantine prototypes spread inland.
Look up at the central panel of the Hand of God among angels; it is one of the most arresting images on the gorge walk. The colour palette is reduced — ochres, red, white — and the figures are simplified almost to a folk style. The smell of damp tufa gives the church its modern Turkish name.