Red Church Album
Kizil Kilisi is the Red Church, half an hour’s drive up and over the hills behind Guzelyurt. Rather fragile, it stands strikingly alone in cultivated fields surrounded by hills.
It is the only byzantine church still standing in this part of the world, many have been destroyed or allowed to crumble by previous Turkish governments as probably a deliberate policy of erasing the Christian past – see Alexander Dalrymple’s From the Holy Mountain.
The Friends of Cappadocia are raising money to restore it before it collapses, but it is a race against time as you can see here…
We agree with Gertrude Bell who came here in July 1907 that this is an amazing and impressive site. http://www.gerty.ncl.ac.uk/ “found the finest church I have yet seen, standing quite complete all by itself. A building like this is worth 7 days’ journey. It pulls all one’s other work straight, and having thoroughly understood this one because I could see every detail, I can correct several other plans from it.” letter 11/7/07
From Bell’s diary:
Thurs July 11 [11 July 1907] Off at 6.30 with 2 Greeks and Haidar and rode over the hill east to Sivri Hissar. It is the little point one sees from far off. There is a small castle on top and the village lies below to the east. We went first still further east down into the valley where I found a great church standing all by itself with heaps of featureless ruins round it. It has the same ground plan as Chukurken and I think I can safely correct my plan of the latter from it. The nave had an aisle only on the N side, 2 double columns form the arcade. The nave and transepts are barrel vaulted, the vaults not horseshoed.
Gertrude Bell photo 1907
All the windows and arches and the apse are horseshoed. No decoration over windows or doors, a Greek cross in a circle over the door lintels. The dome over the cross is octagonal, 4 sides broken by windows, 4 sides scooped out into quarter vaults. Above the octagon a round dome. 
The dentil appears on the upper member of the cornice outside. The column caps were much weatherworn and I cd not make out whether they had been decorated but I think not. The chief difference from Churkurken was that the aisle vault was lower than the nave, the W front coming down in a steep gable. I am not quite sure about this but the photographs will show. A penthouse narthex. S of the church a spring of good water with a sarcophagus shaped water trough by it.
From the Friends of Cappadocia: - “A lonely proud church stands since the 6th century opposite the chain of Melendiz mountains. It’s the only remaining built church of that period in Cappadocia. Kizil Kilise is thought to have been built on a property belonging to St Gregory of Naziance, one of the founders of Christianity in Cappadocia and his tomb may have been in the church. If nothing is done soon, the church’s dome will fall and the rest of the church will collapse with it.”
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