The Snake Church — Yılanlı Kilise, also called the church of Saint Onuphrius — is inside the Göreme Open Air Museum and is visited as part of it. It dates to the eleventh century and was left unfinished: its apse is cut into the long wall on the left rather than at the end, the main room is a rectangle running crosswise under a barrel vault, and the space added on the south, where the graves are, has a flat ceiling. The entrance is on the north.
The painting is what people come in for, and both sides of the vault carry saints held in honour in Cappadocia. Directly opposite the entrance is Christ holding the gospel in his left hand, with the church's founder beside him. On the east of the vault, Saint George and Saint Theodore fight the dragon, and Helena stands with her son Constantine holding the true cross. On the west is Saint Onuphrius - naked, long-haired, a palm tree before him - and beside him Saint Thomas in the position of blessing and Saint Basil with a book in his hand.
Getting there
- Access
- Inside the Göreme Open Air Museum.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Nevşehir as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -0.1 °C in January to 21.4 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (58 mm) and lightest in August (8 mm). Long-term means for 1959-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
