Ayazini Ören Yeri

It is known that Ayazini Village, reached by going 4,7 kilometres to the right from the 27th kilometre of the Afyonkarahisar-Eskişehir highway, has been used as a settlement since the Phrygian Period. Family and single-person rock tomb chambers from the Roman and Byzantine periods, churches and rock settlements from the Byzantine Period are works carved out because the land was suitable for this type of settlement. There are works such as lion tomb chambers, columned tomb chambers, and its church carved into the rock as exterior and interior architecture. In addition, there is Avdalaz Castle, where the rock mass was carved and turned into a settlement, with a cistern inside.

AYAZİNİ ROCK HOUSES

The tuff formation rocky area located at the entrance of Ayazini town in İhsaniye District and on the left side of the road within the town was turned into settlements by being carved here and there in the Early Byzantine Period. Some houses are single-roomed, while others were carved side by side and one above another, adjoining each other or separately. Some are reached by steps, while others are accessed from inside through tunnel-like passages. In some rooms there are platforms for sitting, and niches of various sizes for placing belongings and lighting tools. Of the rock houses on both sides of the entrance to Avdalaz Valley, the one on the left is large and multi-storeyed, and in the wide central section of this rock settlement reached by a sloping tunnel exit, there are rows of seats side by side on the circularly made wall, and in the middle empty space there are large and deep pits used like a hearth and storage. Next to this section, inside a small slightly raised room, a toilet called alaturka was made carved into the rock. The hole of the toilet opens to the outside of the rock. The same toilet also exists in the rock settlement on the right side of the road. The rock mass at the upper end of Avdalaz Valley, called a castle, was also carved one inside another and one above another and turned into a very voluminous settlement like today's apartment buildings. In the ground of this rock, there is a cistern carved deep.

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AYAZİNİ ROCK TOMBS

They are in the form of family and single-person rock tomb chambers from the Roman and Byzantine periods, and some were carved as double-storeyed. The fact that the cemetery of Ayazini Town is also in the same place provides important information in terms of people using the same place for the choice of burial place. On the facades of the tomb chambers there are columned front spaces with triangular pediments containing Medusa heads, and inside the room entered through a door there are arched trough tombs. Some are decorated with lion reliefs, and in one of them reliefs of the husband and wife who owned the tomb were also made.

AYAZİNİ CHURCH

It is a church carved into the rock, inside a steep tuff rocky area by the roadside at the entrance of Ayazini Town, İhsaniye District. The characteristic of the church structure is that it is apsidal and domed as an exterior facade carved into the rock surface. Together with the adjoining rock rooms around it, it is a monastery structure built in the 1000s.

Source: "Anadolu'nun Kilidi AFYON"

Places to Visit in Afyonkarahisar

Address: atih, 03370 Ayazini/İhsaniye/Afyonkarahisar