These little oases
of culture preserved amongst a wilderness of Turk tempt the traveller
with a romance which is now vanishing from Roman and Greek ruins.
The Ipek monastery is a beautiful old place with the walls half buried
on one side. The old church, orange outside, is very dark within, but
contains many beautiful paintings. Surely here is the home of Post
Impressionism and of Futurism. The decorations of the bases of the
pillars are quite futuristic even orpeistic.
The pictures are Byzantine. But the Turks have picked out the eyes, as
they always do. One enormous painting of a head which filled a
semicircle over a door is particularly fine. Most halos are round, but
the painter had deemed the ears and beard worthy of extra bulges in this
saint's halo, which added to the decorative effect.
Beautiful apple trees were dotted about the big garden through which the
wriggly river ran. Ducks, geese and turkeys wandered around, so fat that
they were indifferent to the meal that was being served out to them.
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