Cappadocia

How the rock was made

Three volcanoes, Erciyes, Hasan and Güllüdağ, buried this plateau under ash between ten and two million years ago. The ash settled into tuff, a stone soft enough to cut with a hand tool yet firm enough to hold a vaulted ceiling. Wind and the Melendiz stream did the first carving, and people have been doing the rest ever since.

The cones and pillars known as fairy chimneys form where a cap of harder basalt protects the tuff below it, the same volcanic story told for the whole peninsula on the Anatolia sheet. Erosion eats the surrounding rock and leaves a column with a stone hat. The best groups stand in Paşabağı, Zelve and the Love Valley north of Göreme.

Stone Age axes have been found on the plateau, and the Hittites farmed it. The Cappadocia most people come to see, though, belongs to the Byzantine centuries. From the fourth century onward, Christian communities carved churches, refectories and cells into the cliffs, and dug entire towns underground when Arab raiders came close.

Göreme Open-Air Museum

Seven km from Ürgüp, the museum is a single hillside holding a monastery complex: eight churches, seven refectories and a scatter of grave chambers. Almost everything dates from the ninth to the eleventh century.

Start with the Maidens' Monastery, a six-story block from the first half of the eleventh century, and the Chapel of St. Basil opposite it.

Two church types stand side by side. Plain red geometric decoration belongs to the iconoclast period, 726 to 843, when images were forbidden. The narrative fresco cycles of the life of Christ came afterward, painted on a layer of plaster over the rough tuff, provincial cousins of the gold mosaics in Hagia Sophia.

The Dark Church

Karanlık Kilise has the best-preserved frescoes in the region because it has almost no windows. Sunlight never faded its blues and golds. It sits on a two-story rock mass south of the courtyard, with a stone refectory on the lower level and a domed narthex above.

Expect a separate ticket and a queue, so come at opening time.

The Apple Church, the Snake Church with its Deisis scene, and the Sandal Church complete the core circuit. Across the road, outside the main ticket area, the Tokalı Church is the largest in Göreme and has the finest painting of all. Many visitors skip it by mistake.

The valleys between

Göreme town sits at the head of a fan of valleys, and walking them is the point of coming. The Kılıçlar valley runs east from the museum toward Aktepe, past the Kılıçlar church, a ninth- or tenth-century building on a Greek-cross plan with a dome on four columns. Aktepe itself is the sunrise viewpoint, 2 km uphill from the Ürgüp road.

The Zemi and Görkün valleys lead west toward Uçhisar, passing the Hidden Church and the El Nazar church. The Red and Rose valleys north of the museum are the classic late-afternoon walk, three hours of soft trail between pink cliffs that end at Çavuşin. Zelve, 4 km from Avanos, is a whole abandoned rock village of parallel ravines, inhabited until 1952.

Uçhisar castle is a single fortress-shaped rock riddled with rooms. It is the highest point on the plateau and the only place where you can read the whole landscape at once. Go for sunset, not midday.

Ihlara valley

The Aksaray road forks at the eleventh km toward Ihlara. The valley is a gorge 80 to 100 m deep cut by the Melendiz stream, called Peristrema in Byzantine sources, and it runs 14 km from Ihlara village to Selime. Around a hundred churches are cut into its walls, and about a dozen are open.

The Ağaçaltı church near the entrance stairs is a cross-in-square building with a Byzantine Ascension in its dome. Farther along, the Kırkdamaltı church carries a portrait of the Seljuk sultan Mesud II beside the Byzantine donors, which tells you how the two populations lived together after 1071. The point is explained in the history of Anatolia.

Walk the valley floor from Ihlara to Belisırma, the shaded and easy half, and take a taxi back. Selime's cathedral at the far end looks from the road like an apartment block. Inside, two columns and a pillar divide the naves, and black-and-orange frescoes of the life of Christ fill the barrel-vaulted side aisles.

Soğanlı

Two valleys south of Ürgüp, 45 km by road, and far quieter than either Göreme or Ihlara. The Ürgüp to Damsa road runs 13 km between poplars to the village, and the valley begins 500 m beyond on foot. The churches here are cut into free-standing cones rather than cliff faces, which gives Soğanlı its odd rooftop skyline.

Karabaş, Yılanlı and the domed Kubbeli are the three to see. Local women sell the cloth dolls that have been made here for generations. Allow half a day and bring lunch.

Underground cities

Derinkuyu goes down eight levels and could shelter several thousand people with their animals. Kaymaklı, 10 km north, is shallower and less crowded. Both share the same engineering: ventilation shafts that also served as wells, corridors that slope gently between levels, and rolling millstone doors that could only be closed from inside.

Chapels, wineries, stables and grain silos are all there. Tuff does not absorb moisture, which kept the rooms dry enough to store food for months. Some fifty underground settlements are known, including Özkonak, Mucur and Tatların, but Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı are the two with proper lighting and marked routes.

Practical notes

Base yourself in Göreme or Ürgüp. Kayseri airport is 75 km away and Nevşehir 40 km; both have shuttle services that meet every flight and cost less than a taxi. From Istanbul the flight takes about an hour, the bus about ten.

Balloon flights leave before dawn and depend entirely on wind; the aviation authority grounds them roughly one morning in four, so book for your first morning to keep a second chance. Museum tickets are sold separately for the Dark Church and for the underground cities. The Museum Pass Cappadocia covers most of them if you plan to see more than four.

The sweet shops of Ürgüp and Avanos sell dried apricots, pistachio baklava and rose lokum for the road. Ask for Gaziantep pistachio; the local walnut versions are cheaper and drier.

Cappadocia pairs naturally with Konya, 230 km southwest, on the road to the Lycian coast. The plateau's own kitchen leans on pottery-baked meat and Ürgüp wine, both covered in Turkish cuisine. If you are coming from the Aegean, the Pamukkale road is the sensible route.

Questions