SÜMELA Monastery and Hagia Sophia-I Sagir Mosque in Trabzon opened to service again
The Sümela Monastery and Hagia Sophia-I Sagir Mosque (in Trabzon) which were closed for restoration will be opened to visits today with the participation of Minister of Culture and Tourism Mehmet Nuri Ersoy. The historic Sümela Monastery in the Maçka district of Trabzon known as one of the important centers of Turkey’s faith tourism, and the Hagia Sophia-I Sagir Mosque which was converted from a museum to a mosque in 2013, will be opened to visitors today with a ceremony.
The Monastery of Sümela which is one of the important tourist centers of Turkeyin Altındere Valley, Maçka district of Trabzon was closed on 22 September 2015 due to restoration and concerned work has now been completed at the Monastery.
A section of the monastery that is the first courtyard of the complex was opened to visit on May 25, 2019 and it attracted intense interest of the local and foreign tourists visiting the spot. Work was carried out by 24 industrial climbers and 5 engineers and the team managed to accomplish some real hard fixing work on the entrance gate of the monastery called wedge block, using steel rope towing.
Rock retaining barriers were built to provide the best and long-term safety level in the restoration works, where stabilization and fixation of large rock fragments were carried out.
10 thousand tons of cracked rock cracked in Sümela Monastery, which will be protected by the system in which high strength steel wire networks are stretched to the slope, was fixed by combining with 16 meters of iron. With the restoration work completed in Sümela, whose second courtyard has been closed for 5 years, visitors can now visit the monastery safely.
