The Secrets Of Cappadocia ✈️

Love valley:
A hike of about 5 km through a wonderful landscape with winegards and fruittrees.
Zelve open air museum:
Once home to one of the largest communities in the region, the Zelve Open Air Museum is an amazing cave city, filled with dwellings, religious and secular rooms. Zelve is about 10 km outside Goreme on the Avanos road. Here the Christians and Muslims lived together in perfect harmony, until 1924. Then Christians had to leave the valley because of the exchange of minorities between Greece and Turkey, and the Muslims were forced to evacuate the valley in the 50s when life became dangerous due to risk on erosion. They left the place to set up a modern village a little further on, which they gave the name Yeni Zelve (Nieuw Zelve).

Now the old Zelve is a ghost town and the erosion continues. The three valleys in the open-air museum Zelve offer a paradise for hikers. It takes at least an hour and a half for a good trekker to walk through these valleys, which are also home to the oldest examples of Cappadocian architecture and religious paintings.

Devrent valley:
Devrent Valley, also known as the Valley of the Imagination and also as Pink Valley, does not have cave churches like the other valleys of Cappadocia. There are also no Roman castles or tombs in Devrent Valley. Actually it has never been inhabited. So what makes it so famous? The Moonscape!

Devrent Valley (also spelled Dervent Valley) reveals many different rock formations and is only a 10-minute drive from Goreme. The small fairy chimneys in the valley form a lunar landscape due to their strange appearance. The valley also has many animal-shaped rocks. It looks like a zoo made by nature. Some of the most important or easiest to see animal forms are camel, snake, seal and dolphin. If you let your imagination run wild, you will find much more. It’s like looking at clouds and seeing a dragon. There is even a rock pillar that looks like the Virgin Mary holding Jesus Christ.
Özkonak Underground City:
Ozkonak Underground City is a super normal and amazing masterpiece and is located near Avanos. This glorious structure reflects the dreamlike historical atmosphere due to its architectural characteristic and its geopolitical situation.

The breathtaking, unique and incredible underground city, hollowed out of tuff, was built by the locals to defend themselves against the invasions of the warriors. It dates back to 400 BC, Byzantine (Rome) era. Therefore, many traps were placed here against the enemies, which is one of the main important features that enchant the tourists in our time.

As soon as you step into this precious, mystical underground city, you definitely realize how amazing the location, the ancient sanctuary is.

First, the priceless construction pays attention with its apartment complex plan, four large halls, four separate tombs, 10 special rooms,

Overnicht in Cappadocia

(OPTIONAL) Up early for one of the highlights of a visit to Cappadocia. You will be picked up to experience Cappadocie from above with a balloon ride over the colorful valleys of this natural wonder at sunrise. It is precisely at sunrise that an enchanting play of colors appears over the landscape, which depicts itself as a fairytale. A once in a lifetime experience that you should definitely experience. (Bring a jacket, flat-soled shoes and definitely your camera)

After breakfast at the hotel you will head towards Ortahisar

Ortahisar: Ortahisar means ‘middle castle’ and as the name implies, it is centrally located between the Cappadocian towns of Goreme, Urgup, Uchisar and Nevsehir. As you enter the city, you will see doors in the rock walls on both sides. These doors are the best example of the cool air storage facilities in Cappadocia. These naturally air-conditioned spaces store lemons and oranges from the Mediterranean, apples from Nigde, local potatoes, quinces and onions. Green lemons slowly turn yellow in these storage areas.

Ortahisar is famous for its friendly inhabitants, picturesque stone houses, narrow streets and pretty churches, as well as the castle-like rock formation after which the town is named. This 90-meter-high natural fortress, a prominent landmark in the region — honeycomb structure with caves and tunnels, camouflaged by nature with no indication of human presence inside — has partially crumbled, revealing some of its interior. Today it has been restored and the top is accessible by stairs. Ortahisar Castle offers a wonderful panorama over the fairy chimneys of Hallacdere and the snowcapped peak of Mt. Erciyes.

If you follow the street close to the main fortress, you can visit the Ali Reis Church with Christ on the main dome. If you keep on the main street in the south, you can see the Balkan Deresi up to the Balkan Churches. Some churches near Ortahisar have recently been opened. When leaving Urgup, keep right for 2 km towards Mustafapasa (Sinasos), after 1 km you will see the yellow signs for Sarica Church and Kepez Church. Another kilometer takes you to Pancarlik Church in the Pancarlik Valley, which has very fine frescoes on the ceiling.

The Hallacdere Monastery Complex (also known as the Hospital Monastery) 1 km northeast of Ortahisar is one of the best examples of the courtyard cloisters. It has a vestibule, a kitchen, a large burial chamber, five rooms of various sizes and a church with a four-column crucifix. Unique in Cappadocia are the animal head decorations on column capitals and the sculpture of a human figure on the wall. Due to the silting up, the ground level within the complex is more than a meter below that of the inner courtyard.

Overnight in Cappadocia

After enjoying breakfast in the hotel, your program is as following
THREE GRACES (BEAUTIES) (photo break)
Three Graces are the beautiful three fairy chimneys in Urgüp. It is the most famous natural beauty and the symbol of Urgüp. This amazing natural formation is known not only for its enchanting scenery, but also for the incredible story behind it.

Via the beautiful old Greek village of Mustafapaşa to Keslik Monastery (Cemil köy)

The Keşlik Monastery outside Ürgüp is a vast cave monastery complex with two churches (St. Michael and St. Stephen), a large refectory hall, a sacred well, and endless cave rooms. Set in an idyllic garden setting, this is the most expansive monastery in Cappadocia.

This site has been used and developed in many ways over the course of 2000 years. This area was a tomb in pre-Christian Roman times, a large communal monastery during the Byzantine era, a functioning Orthodox church in the 20th century, and now a tourist attraction in modern Turkey.

Sobessos mosaics:
The ancient city of Sobesos in the village of Sahinefendi is quite remote from the main attractions in Cappadocia on the way to the Soganli Valley. The ancient city was discovered by some treasure hunters working in the fields in 2002. Today you can see the only Roman ancient city in Cappadocia through research and excavations.

The archaeologists have uncovered the Roman bathing area, the Agora, the basilica and the Bouleterion buildings. Much remains to be excavated in this city, but because the government is not funding enough, the archaeologists can only excavate every 2 years for about 3 months.

The Roman bath area has good hypocaust (underfloor) central heating, which can still be seen. Located right next to the bath, the Agora is a simple ancient shopping mall.

The Bouleterion was something like the parliament of contemporary governments and several columns still stand around a rectangular building. The basilica has the best preserved mosaics in the Cappadocia region and has beautiful depictions of cross shapes.

Soğanlı valley:
This valley is located near Yesilhisar in Kayseri province, 65 km southeast of Goreme. It is an earth rift from the third tectonic period (when the continents separated). Fractures and collapses during earthquakes added to erosion resulting in deep valleys and canyons. The Soganli Valley, which is divided in two, has been occupied since Roman times. The rock cones found on the sides of the valley were used as tombs by the Romans, and later by the Byzantines as churches. The frescoes in the church date from the 6th — 9th and 13th centuries. Important churches in the valley are Karabas, Yilanli, Kubbeli and the Church of St. Barbara (Tahtali).
Overnight in Cappadocia

A HIKE THROUGH IHLARA VALLEY
Ihlara Valley (often misspelled Ilhara Valley), near the Hasan volcano and the Melendiz volcano (two of the three volcanoes of Cappadocia) is a gorge with a depth of about 100 meters and was formed thousands of years ago by the Melendiz River. It starts in the village of Ihlara and ends with the Selime Monastery in the village of Selime after making 26 turns over 14 kilometers.

It is believed that the valley contained more than four thousand dwellings and one hundred cave churches, decorated with frescoes. About eighty thousand people once lived in the Ihlara Valley.

Selime Monastery:
One of the most unexpected surprises in Cappadocia is the beautiful rock-cut monastery in Selime, at the end of the Ihlara Valley, 28 km from Aksaray. Selime was home to Hittite, Assyrian, Persian, Roman, Byzantine, Danişment, Seljuk and Ottoman civilizations. One of the most important aspects of the fortress-monastery of Selime was that many prominent clergymen were trained there. The region’s military headquarters was also located there. Although the monastery dates from the 8th and 9th centuries, the frescoes in the structure date from the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The images include Ascension, Annunciation and Mother Mary.

The Selime Monastery is the largest religious building in Cappadocia with a cathedral-sized church. Inside the cathedral there are two rows of rock columns. These columns divide the cathedral into three parts. The size of the church is amazing. The columns and arches of the church, cut directly from the tuff in the Selime Monastery, still bear the distinctive markings of several generations that once inhabited it. Rudimentary icons from the early days can be seen more clearly, but detailed frescoes, painted later, are barely visible under the years of soot covering the surfaces from when the Turks used the room for cooking.

After breakfast another wonderful day is waiting for you:
Hiking day from Göreme to Uçhisar through the beautiful pigeon valley with a visit to the Uçhisar castle, old Uçhisar and wine tasting at Turasan winery

Uchisar is located on the highest point of Cappadocia, on the Nevsehir-Goreme road, just 5 km from Goreme. The top of the Uchisar Castle offers a beautiful panorama of the surroundings with Mount Erciyes in the distance.

Many rooms hollowed into the rock are connected by stairs, tunnels and passageways. At the entrances to the rooms, like those in the underground settlements, millstone doors have been used to control access to these places. Unfortunately, due to the erosion in places of this multi-storey castle, it is not possible to reach all rooms. Most of the rooms, located on the north side of the castle, are now used as dovecuts. Farmers used these cave pigeon houses to collect the droppings of pigeons, which is an excellent natural fertilizer for the orchards and vineyards.

There are also many other pigeon houses in Pigeon Valley (Guvercinlik Vadisi in Turkish) connecting Uchisar to Goreme. Most of these cave dwellings are painted white to attract the birds and their valuable droppings.

The fairy chimneys to the west, east and north of Uchisar were hollowed out and used as tombs during Roman times. Within these rock-cut tombs, the entrances generally facing west are clinkers or stone slabs on which the bodies were laid.

Uchisar Pigeon Valley, Cappadocia Many rock churches have been discovered not only on the edge of the castle, but also inside the castle. The reason for this may be that Goreme, with numerous churches and monasteries, is very close to Uchisar.

The simple Byzantine tombs on top of the castle are not very interesting as they have been hollowed out and looted. It is said that in cities with citadels e.g. Uchisar, Ortahisar and Urgup (Bashisar), long defense tunnels extended far into the surrounding areas. However, because the tunnels have collapsed in some places, this theory cannot be confirmed, but it is a popular myth about the great distances they traveled.
Overnight in Cappadocia

After your breakfast it will be time for your transfer to the airport of Kayseri for your flight back to Antalya Cappadocia will be for ever in your heart and let’s meet again on one of our other unique ETD Boutique tours. Have a safe journey home.