Guide
The church of St John stands at the entrance to Gülşehir, hollowed out of a single fairy chimney on two levels. An inscription in its apse dates the work to 1212, which makes it one of the very few thirteenth-century single-nave churches in the region and one of the few Cappadocian buildings whose date is fixed by its own writing rather than by style alone.
The lower level held a church along with wine cellars, water channels and graves. That church has one apse and a cross plan with barrel-vaulted arms; its central dome has collapsed. Its decoration was applied straight onto the bedrock in red ochre — stylised animals, geometric shapes and crosses. The upper church is also single-apsed and barrel-vaulted, its niche vaults and faces carrying plant and geometric motifs, and its scenes from the life of Christ arranged in bands and friezes in yellow and brown on a black ground.
What sets the building apart from its neighbours is its iconography. The apse holds a Deesis; the front carries an Annunciation beneath depictions of birds; the vault holds saints in medallions. The southern side of the vault runs from the Last Supper through the Betrayal to the Baptism, with the Death of the Virgin below; the northern side carries the Deposition, the Women at the Empty Tomb and the Descent into Hell. On the west and south walls is a Last Judgement, a subject the Ministry describes as very rarely painted in Cappadocia and present in only a few churches here.
The Judgement begins on the right with the weighing of souls. A central angel holds a staff in one hand and the scales in the other, with two more angels beside him carrying the white cloths that stand for the souls; their haloes use the light blue and orange rarely found in the region's painting. Facing them a naked winged devil hooks one pan of the scales and pulls the line. To the left of the scene come Hell, the punishment of sinners, priests being led away by an angel, the devil dragging clergy down, and the false prophets. The church is in the Gülşehir district; the Ministry's page advises reaching it either by local district transport or with the tour vehicles of agencies running regional trips.
