Sille is a hamlet near Konya, so near that you get there with the city bus (I think it was number 63; it stops at Hükümet Square in the heart of Konya, where most busses seem to make a stop). Yet, though much of the ride is through Konya proper, at some point, having past what must be the most recent additions to the growing town of Konya, you suddenly enter a different world. That’s where Sille starts, and I think the pictures here show that it is quite different from big-town Konya. The Lonely Planet advises you to arrive in the morning in time to have a noon meal at some local eatery, maybe you should. I arrived too late, and the day was so hot I could only think of cool water.

Until the 1920s, Sille was a Greek (‘Rum’) orthodox village. It had some importance, judging the size of the ‘Aya Eleni’-church that still stands in its centre. In the village, a local variant of the (almost extinct) Greek Cappadician was spoken, which is now regarded as a separate dialect of the Greek Cappadician language. In Greek folklore, the costumes and dances from Sille are a separate entity too within the ‘Cappadocia’ region. After the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey, the village was emptied from its orthodox population and the houses and grounds were assigned to muslim immigrants (from Greece and other Balkan countries).
In the barren rocky neighbourhood of the village, the remains of several medieval rock monasteries are worth visiting; they are very ‘Cappadocian’ in style.

Correspondent: J.M.Criel, Antwerpen.
Source: Personal visit (1987) & Wikipedia .