Gorgoli is an ancient settlement located approximately 5 km south of Mustafapaşa and is today popularly called “Golgoli”. The name of the settlement must have been derived from the Greek word “gorga”, meaning “fast flowing water”. “Gorgoli Ruins” are located at the foot of Gorgoli Hill. At the top of this hill, also known as Virgin Mary (Mount Panagia), was the Virgin Mary church (19th century), of which only ruins have survived to the present day. The hill, which is understood to be an ancient settlement, also has various places of different sizes carved into the rocks. It is known that Greeks, especially young people and newlywed couples, stay on the hill for two weeks during the summer months. Those who would stay there took musicians with them; It is rumored that music and dance events were held during this fifteen-day holiday (Stamatopoulos, 1985).
In the Gorgoli settlement, there is a holy spring, a group of cemeteries, some of which are Roman tombs reused in the Middle Ages, rooms, dovecotes and churches built during the Byzantine and Ottoman periods. Almost all the conical rocks here were carved and used as houses or churches. Perhaps there are no Greek graffiti-style inscriptions in the region as dense as there are in Gorgoli. The Greeks left a trace from the past by engraving their names, notes and dates on many rocks here.
One of the most important churches of the settlement is the Church of St. John Theologos (John the Evangelist). It is stated that there are wall paintings inside the large, three-naved rock-carved church and that it is in one of the last cones in Gorgoli. At the back of the church there is a large room with a rectangular entrance carved into the rock. On the wall opposite the entrance is the inscription: “House of God./ Saint Orator,/ Whether fruitful or barren/ Protect the virtuous/ June 1447”. There are other rural churches that have turned into ruins near the church. One of the churches mentioned is the Three Bishops Church (Balta, 2005).
