St. Jean Church, Gülşehir

Carved into the soft volcanic rock at the entrance of Gülşehir, in Nevşehir province, St. Jean Church is really two churches stacked on top of each other. The lower level holds a cross-plan chapel with a barrel vault, together with tombs, wine cellars, a water channel and rooms that seem to have served the church's caretakers. The central dome has collapsed, and the decoration here is modest: geometric patterns and crosses scratched straight into the bedrock.

The real reward is upstairs. The upper chapel has a single apse and a barrel vault, and its walls carry painted friezes that follow the life of Jesus in bands. In the apse you can pick out the Deesis, while saints and plant and geometric motifs frame the niches and the façade. The church is dated to the 13th century and is among the few single-nave churches of that period in the region.

What sets it apart from its Cappadocian neighbours is the iconography. A Last Judgment scene appears in only a handful of the region's rock churches, and this is one of them. Gülşehir itself, on the south bank of the Kızılırmak, is a quiet town worth a short wander, with an Ottoman complex of mosque, madrasa and fountain built by a grand vizier.