Near the southern end of the valley, close to the village of Ihlara. The Crooked Stone Church is one of the largest in the gorge, with a high central dome and three apses. Much of the original 9th- and 10th-century fresco programme is fragmentary, scarred by smoke from the fires of later squatters.
What survives is enough — saints, scenes from the life of Christ, a powerful Pantocrator on what's left of the ceiling. The size of the space gives a sense of how seriously the Byzantine monastic communities took this gorge.