Four days in Trabzon: the last Greek empire, and a monastery stuck to a cliff

Built in the 1250s, when Trebizond was an empire in its own right, and painted throughout with a cycle of frescoes that survived because the building spent long stretches out of religious use altogether. The free standing bell tower went up in 1427. It became a mosque again in 2013 and the pre-Islamic images were curtained and boarded over, then largely uncovered again in 2020. The carved frieze along the south porch is the thing to look for outside.

A white wooden villa in the hills above town, built at the end of the 19th century for a Greek banker, Konstantin Kabayanidis, whose family left in the population exchanges. Atatürk stayed here on his visits from 1924 onwards and it is now furnished as it was then, down to his books. The garden and the view over the coast are worth as much as the rooms.

The restaurants around the harbour and along the seafront do whatever came in that morning, grilled or fried, with a pile of salad and cornbread. Between November and March order hamsi and let them decide how to cook it.

Founded in the fourth century and rebuilt many times, the monastery was abandoned in 1923 when the region's Greeks were deported, and then left to looters for decades. Restoration has reopened it in stages. You pay twice, once for the site and once for the shuttle from the car park, and you still climb a good deal. Frescoes are painted on the outer rock face as well as inside the cave church, and more keep turning up in sealed chambers.

Trout is the thing on this road. A line of restaurants along the river below the monastery keep it in tanks and grill it whole, usually with muhlama on the side.

The city's only nunnery, built in the 1360s around one of the sacred cave springs on Boztepe hill, closed when the Orthodox population left in 1922 and restored in 2021. The rock cut church has frescoes of the emperor Alexios III with his wife and his mother, who probably paid for the place. The terrace outside looks straight down over the whole city and the sea.

A long narrow lake at the bottom of a steep wooded valley, the best part of two hours from the city by road and high enough above the coast to be cold in the evening and often under cloud. The shore at the lower end is solid with hotels and restaurants. The walking paths above the village, up towards the summer pastures, are where the point of the place becomes obvious.

A small port town on the coast road back, best known across Turkey for its knives, which are still forged and finished here and sold in a handful of workshops in the centre. There are Ottoman mansions on the slopes behind the town and a good stretch of seafront to walk before you drive on.

A tiny Greek basilica of the sixth or seventh century, one of the oldest buildings standing in the city, on a traffic island in the middle of town. It went out of use when the Greeks were deported and its paintings were covered; a restoration in 2021 and 2022 put it back together. Ten minutes is enough, and it is worth crossing the road for.

The cathedral of Trebizond, built in the 10th or 11th century as the Church of All Saints on much older foundations, and the church in which the emperors were crowned. It became a mosque in 1461 immediately after the conquest and has been one ever since. Work in 2017 and 2018 uncovered the late Roman mosaic floor, now walked over on a raised glass platform, which is the reason to come.

The Genoese rebuilt this bastion above the eastern ravine after 1306 and called it the beautiful castle, Leonkastron. Very little of it is left standing and what remains is now a park with tea tables and a good view down the gorge to the sea. Twenty minutes, a glass of tea, and you are done with the city.

The Havaş shuttle runs from the centre along the coast road to the terminal, and a taxi takes about a quarter of an hour outside rush hour. Domestic flights want you there an hour ahead.