Cappadocia travel and tour tips in Turkey

Your holiday travel through Turkey should include a flight or a bus trip to the incredible landscape of Cappadocia in central Turkey, where a city of homes was carved into volcanic rock about 2,000 years ago.

It’s easy to find a hotel built into a cave system and the Flintstone experience can be enjoyed with hotel tariffs under 280 Turkish lira per night.

Cappadocia travel tips and Turkey guide

Your travel through Turkey isn’t complete unless you visit the fascinating Cappadocia region which boasts a bizarre landscape of clustered chimney cones and the remnants of underground cities made from tunnels which used to house as many as 20,000 people.

These cities were burrowed into the earth partly as insulated storage bins for grains and partly to protect local Cappadocia tribes from the onslaught of invading Byzantines.

The best known of these underground communities is Derinkuyu, which was tunnelled as deep as 20 levels into the Anatolian plateau.

Tourists can nowadays travel underground as deep as eight storeys through the tunnels, which are dissected by ventilation shafts. Massive circular rock doors were built to roll across the passages when they needed to be sealed against the enemy.

The ventilation shafts provided fresh air but were also cleverly designed to disperse the release of cooking smoke so the location of the city was not betrayed and it didn’t guide the enemy. The planning and engineering were impressive.

Dozens of underground cities were built so that entire communities and their livestock could hide from marauding armies.

There are about 150 underground settlements in the Cappadocia district of Turkey but only a few such as Derinkuyu are open to the public.

Cappadocia is about 660 kilometres south-east of Istanbul and 160 kilometres north of Turkey’s Mediterranean coast. The region is designated as a national park and is bounded by Kayseri to the east, Aksaray to the west and Nidge to the south.

Within many Cappadocian valleys you’ll find a maze of strange volcanic cones, as pictured above and below.

Valleys near Aktepe in northern Cappadocia are the most densely clustered and best preserved.

The cones were formed as a result of extensive volcanic activity millions of years ago which left different layers and densities of rock across the Turkey landscape.

The cones formed over the eons because their tops contain harder basalt rock which sheltered the softer underlying strata from rains that eroded all the surrounding soft rock.

The volcanic rock, or tufa, is soft when first mined but hardens when exposed to the air - a characteristic exploited by the locals for centuries to build underground cities and chisel their homes into the rockface.

The rock colours are stunning and the region featured in the Star Wars films as Tatooine, the deserted planet where the Skywalker family lived.

Cappadocia travel tip … An ideal way to see Cappadocia during your holiday travel is from the air. Aircraft are not allowed to fly over the region because of its fragile geology but a balloon flight can be hired from Goreme.

Balloon rides over the region are available but a one hour sightseeing trip usually costs around 370 Turkish lira for adults and 60 lira for children aged less than six (2011).

Bring clothing appropriate for the climate if you travel to Cappadocia as the temperature can reach 50 degrees Celsius in summer but plunge to minus 20 degrees in winter.

The Cappadocia region’s tribes carved homes into these so-called fairy chimneys, some becoming impressive dwellings with different rooms on several storeys.

These bizarre dwellings provide built-in insulation to protect against the hot summers and frigid winter days of Cappadocia.

The rolling plains of Cappadocia are fertile and this has lured various conquering civilisations to inhabit the region over 3,000 years of recorded history … Hittites, Phrygians, Greeks, Persians, Romans, etc.

Since prehistoric times in Turkey, people have carved homes into the chimneys of Cappadocia.

Cappadocia holiday travel tips

More than a dozen civilisations have settled in Turkey’s Cappadocia district over the millennia.

The original civilisation, the Hittites, carved huge granaries into the cool rock to take advantage of its stable temperature.

Christianity in the region dates back to the time of St Paul, who settled in the region to hide from the Romans.

The most significant creation of subterranean dwellings in Cappadocia occurred in the three centuries after Christ when tens of thousands of persecuted Christians carved deep into the rock to build places of worship hidden from the Roman Empire.

In following years, the Cappadocia communities were able to vanish into the earth when threatened by the Byzantine Empire as it marched out of Constantinople and across Turkey.

Sentinels would blow a horn or otherwise signal the city if enemy troops were sighted and the citizens had time to retreat into the underground cities with their possessions and livestock, sometimes hiding during weeks of siege.

The Byzantine civilisation was in power in Turkey till the 7th century but its people finally evacuated in the face of invading Islamic armies. Cappadocia’s underground cities were deserted.

These authentic wonders of the world fell into disrepair during following centuries until the largest tunnels of Cappadocia were rediscovered in 1963.

Cappadocia travel and tour tips

Cappadocia is nowadays predominantly Muslim but had a large Christian population until 1923 when hundreds of thousands of Christians emigrated under the Population Exchange Treaty with Greece.

Local villagers still live a mostly traditional lifestyle farming sheep, cattle, vegetables, apples and crops.

Many still live in cave dwellings, albeit with electricity, plumbing and a few mod cons such as a satellite dish.