Skip to main content

Kirkdamalti Church

Kırkdamaltı Kilisesi ('Church with forty roofs', also called 'St George's Church'). An inscription allows the church to be dated between 1283 and 1295, which makes it the last known example of Christian architecture in the Ihlara valley until the revival of church building by the Cappadocian Greeks in the 19th century.

The church's paintings include depictions of St George, a painting of the Byzantine consul Basileos Giagupes, who was also an Emir and is shown in Seljuk clothing with his wife Thamar, a Georgian princess. The aforementioned inscription mentions both the Seljuk Sultan Mesud II and the Byzantine emperor Andronikos II Palaiologos, a sign that at this date some kind of peaceful co-existence between Christians and Muslims was possible in Cappadocia.