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Photo: Ingeborg Simon, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
It's the ruin of a 10th / 11th century Byzantine church, and the chief building of an ancient village cut into the mountainside. It looks like the village fell on hard times, as the houses were later subdivided, and abandoned in the 14th century. Approach by the road from Akhisar village, which crosses the hills into Ihlara Valley.
Çanlı Kilise, meaning "bell church" or "church with a bell", is a Byzantine-era ruin site located about 15 km southeast of the city of Aksaray in Turkey. It consists of a large rock-cut settlement surrounding a prominent masonry church which lends its name to the whole site. A rare masonry church from the historical region of Cappadocia, the church is one of the best examples of Byzantine masonry architecture in central Anatolia and is frequently cited in textbooks on Byzantine architecture. Surrounding the church is a series of rock-carved houses carved into the south side of a hill over a distance of about one kilometer. Across the broad valley to the south, the peaks of Hasan Dağı are visible. Çanlı Kilise is accessible by a road winding its way from Akhisar, 4 km to the west on the plain below, up through a rugged hilly area en route to Çeltek, which is 6 km north of Çanlı Kilise on the same road.
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Ulu Camii
It's also known as Karamanoğlu Mehmed Bey Mosque, as it was built in 1408 during the Karaman reign. The detached minaret was added in 1925.
Includes the elegant tombs of Islamic saint Somuncu Baba (Sheyh Hamid-i Vali 1331–1412) and the scholar Cemaleddin (Şeyh Cemaleddin Aksarayî’ni, 12th century). There's also a mosque, library, display place and exhibition hall.
A chain fairground.
Small but informative museum of the area's history and prehistory.
A richly-decorated caravanserai of 1230/40. Access has been closed for years.
An archaeological site with nothing for casual visitors to see. But look out for its artefacts in museums: the finest, the "Pratt Ivories", are now in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art but were probably looted.