The origins of this unusual place can be traced back to the Tertiary period about 50 million years ago, when craters and volcanoes dominated the landscape. Since then, a huge amount of ash and lava flowed out of their bowels and froze, turning into a soft tuff. The forces of erosion have formed an incredible and unique landscape. For hundreds of years, people have been building houses, monasteries, churches and underground cities from malleable breeds.
General information
Cappadocia is a unique region of Turkey. It especially impresses with its "lunar landscape" around the cities of Urgyup, Uchisar, Avanos, Mustafapasha and Göreme, where erosion formed caves, crevices, peaks, towers and bizarre folds in volcanic stone.
The ideal place to stay and start exploring the sights is Göreme (Turkey). How to get to it - any local will tell you. It is easy to get here by bus from different points of the country - Istanbul, Izmir, Ephesus, Pamukkale or Ankara.
The city is a favorite tourist base for many travelers because of the excellent selection of hotels, pensions and guest houses, as well as its proximity to the National Park.
In addition, here you can order very popular balloon tours, where you can see all the splendor of this region from a bird's eye view.
Public transport is not suitable for sightseeing, so you can rent a car and go wherever you want. If not, then there are many good excursions in the region.
Hotels and restaurants
Yurgüp was the tourist center of Cappadocia, but several decades ago budget travelers discovered the city of Avcılar, located in a valley just 1.5 km from the open-air museum. Avcılar was renamed Göreme in Turkey.
Comfortable hotels were built here, good restaurants opened, and now the tourism center has been moved here. Any traveler has a wide selection of places to stay, including real cave hotels and familiar buildings with luxurious or budget rooms. At the height of summer, you need to book accommodation in advance, because the city is filled with guests from all over the world.
Most restaurants and cafes cannot boast of cleanliness and quality of service, therefore, deciding to have a bite to eat at one of the establishments, carefully monitor what they bring to you so as not to spend the whole rest in bed.
Most popular destinations
While there are no attractions in the center of Göreme (Turkey), the surrounding areas abound in interesting places.
- Green tour. You will go to Derinkuyu - one of the best preserved underground cities of Cappadocia, you will see unique rooms where people lived many centuries ago. You will be shown more than a hundred churches and monasteries carved in the rocks, including Selim, where they shot one of the parts of the epic Star Wars.
- Red tour. You will be offered to go to the Valley of the Monks, where Christian hermits built churches, to Avanos - a center for the manufacture of ceramics of the entire area and to an open-air museum. Byzantine cave churches with unique wall paintings, frescoes and portraits of the holy people of Cappadocia and Turkey were preserved there. Göreme will reveal to you the remnants of the beautiful and once great culture of the ancient world.
- Blue tour. You will visit the beautiful and mysterious valleys - Pink and Red, admire the rock castle and cave settlements, where people lived until the 20th century. Then you will be taken to the underground city of Kaymakli - the largest in Goreme and Turkey, where you will see stables, cellars, warehouses and wineries, visit the Pigeon Valley, the old abandoned caves and Greek houses of Uchisar.
Separate excursions
Magic chimneys in the Valley of Love. These pointed peaks are a 15-minute walk from Göreme in Turkey, in the Valley of Love. Having been there, you can understand why the locals gave it such a name.
Uchisar Castle. It is a giant rock, which the holes made in it resemble Swiss cheese. You can freely walk here and explore the caves. The castle is about a 45-minute walk from Göreme. If you do not want to walk, you can take the bus, which takes you to the place in 6-8 minutes.
The underground city of Derinkuyu. Cappadocia has several underground cities, but Derinkuyu is the largest of them. It found seven levels in which the first Christians lived and hid from the persecution of Roman soldiers.
Dream, travel, come to Goreme, to Turkey to enjoy this place and keep it in your heart forever!