Cappadocia Tours

Top 10 Things to Do in Cappadocia Tours 

1. Göreme Open-Air Museum
   
   One of Turkey's Unesco World Heritage Sites since 1984, the Göreme Open-Air Museum is the most famous attraction in your Cappadocia sightseeing tours. The sandy vineyards to a parking lot with a post office, guard post, and souvenir stand. The rock pillars surround this spot and are especially thick on the left of the road. The principal churches are all marked by signs displaying their intriguing names: the Dark Church, the Slipper Church, the Buckle Church.
   
   Inside the churches, the walls and ceilings are covered with early Christian paintings of saints and angels and biblical scenes. Almost all of the paintings of humans have been "defaced," this having been done before the valley was protected. The soft volcanic rock spewed forth from Erciyes centuries ago has been worked into columns and vaults, domes and niches. More than one of the churches has a burial vault hollowed out underneath the sanctuary.
   
   Churches are not the only places to be found in the valley. A whole community once inhabited it. It's not hard to guess the function of any place you might scramble into. Everything needed for a bakery, or a stable, or a workshop is all evident; only it's all carved right from the rock just look around you'll be impressed in your private tours of Cappadocia.
   
   The Tokalı Kilise (Buckle Church) is outside the enclosure. Follow the road down the hill from the parking tot: the church is on the right. It's the biggest of the churches in this area. The name was stuck on the church by the Turkish conquerors for some reason now obscure. There's a burial vault which you can explore the ground level of the church. Among the graffiti on the walls and ceiling is one in modern Greek I wonder what that says.
   
   The rock tower in the center of the town has perhaps the only ruin of its kind: two ruined columns, carved from the rock, with the bottoms missing, not the tops. Everywhere in the soft rock are cut rows of little cubbyholes. These are for raising pigeons the original pigeonholes. Start on the right of the town fountain and walk up the path into the town. There's an open-air mosque, houses in the rock with precarious toe-hole ladders by which to enter, and near the top, a flour mill cut completely from the rock.
   
   Impressive 15 Cave Churches of Goreme Open-air Museum
   
   
   • Swords Church
   • Nunnery and Monastery
   • Chapel of St. Basil
   • Hidden Church
   • Church of the Buckle
   • Apple Church
   • Durmus Kadir Church
   • Yusuf Koc Church
   • El-Nazar Church
   • Virgin Mary Church
   • Church of Saint Barbara
   • The Snake Church
   • Dark Church
   • Church with Sandals
   • St. Catherine Chapel
     
     
     
2. Kaymakli Underground City
   
   Kaymakli underground city is the real highlight of your Cappadocia tours, here there were full cities in every sense of the word, reaching down seven stories into the earth, cities which were inhabited by an estimated 60,000 people!
   
   The first two levels are thought to have been begun by the Hittites, though most of the work was done by Byzantine Christians who retreated here to escape the fury of Arabic Muslim raids in the 7th century.
   
   Your private tour guide at Kaymakli will point out and explain the communal kitchen, stables, the massive round wheel doors to close off the passage against enemies, a wine press complete with storage urn below, an old storage vat, a salt-pulverizing block, living quarters, and workshops.
   
   Finally, the guide takes out a crumpled piece of newspaper he's brought with him, lights it, and drops it into one of the city's wells. Down, down, down it drops, the flame roaring as it passes through the still air in the well. A few hundred feet down it lands finally. Some of the city wells, now partially filled in, are 400 feet deep. Near the well, you'll be able to peer up one of the city's many ventilator shafts which ascend to hidden vents on the surface.
   
   If there ever was a real labyrinth, it must have been this. Even with a private guide, it's possible to get lost; if you don't pay constant attention, you'll be in the position of having to follow the electric wires out of the cave rather than the mythical silver thread.
   
   Voice contact does little good. You're always within shouting distance of your party, but they may be a good distance away, or even on another floor. And so you wander around in what reminded me of nothing so ruin as the inside of a gigantic sponge, from room to room, through tunnel arter tunnel.
   
   The temperature underground seems quite low at first, and I wondered how people could bear it for years at a time. But the temperature is bearable, with the proper food and clothing, and is no colder in winter than it is in summer. Since the temperature is cool enough to keep food fresh, citizens of this strange place, troglodytes, could store up enough for years on end if harvests allowed. If they ran out of food, they could borrow from the "neighbors" in the next city, for it's been found that there are several underground cities in Cappadocia, all connected by incredibly long tunnels. This place will be a really incredible part of your Cappadocia sightseeing tours, and you'll never forget what you really so it. It is just amazing.!
   
   
3. Goreme
   
   On your tours to Cappadocia town, you probably got a glimpse of what this area is like. Nothing else can really compare to it a wide, flat plateau with valleys Goreme out of its middle, and the valleys filled with tall, ghost-like pinnacles of rock some with square holes cut into them.
   
   According to some sources, the Hittites were the first people to live in this area and leave a mark, several thousand years ago. They found that the rock of the plateau and of the pinnacles was soft volcanic rock, easily worked with primitive tools and that they could make safe, secure homes for themselves relatively easily.
   
   You could call them "cavemen," I suppose, though their civilization was far too advanced for this term to apply.
   
   Early Christians who fled Roman, and later Arabic, persecution came to this area and found refuge in the rock caves. They hollowed outhouses, stables, work and storage rooms, churches entire communities from the soft rock. Passages leading into these refuges were built so that massive stone wheel-doors could be rolled across the narrow places, preventing attackers from reaching the interior. There are hundreds of caves in the valley of Cappadocia; no one has ever visited them all. The strangest and most appealing of these cave communities are to be found in and around the Goreme Valley, but even in Urgup itself, there are caves.  The alternative is to organize your private tours of Cappadocia to visit them all.
   
   
4. Derinkuyu Underground City
   
   The city at Derinkuyu is the one most favored by the Ministry of Tourism, and recently many new excavations have been made so that one can now go eight levels beneath the surface of the earth. The city is a bit better laid out, and more regular than the one at Kaymaklı, and the "stories" are more easily distinguishable. There's a beautiful rock church (but with little-painted decoration) about halfway down. Derinkuyu is one of the best highlights of your Cappadocia Tours.
   
   
5. Mustafapasa (Sineson)
   
   You might like to take another side trip. This good-sized town was formerly Greek, resettled by Turks after the exchange of population. The town has rock churches, a monastery, and houses as well, but all of them fairly contemporary all of these were used and kept m good condition until 50 years ago; consequently, they're very well preserved. A Cappadocia tour of all the churches has to be done with the town guide since he has the keys, ana it requires an hour or so because the churches are spread out.
   
   
6. Cavusin
   
   Çavuşin, a similar valley with a high concentration of rock churches, these with better paintings. Soon after the turnoff to Cavusin, the road passes a sideroad to Zelve, still another valley, this one with fewer churches but more houses and workshops. You can visit these valleys directly from Urgup, but only by taxi or you need to take a private tour of Cappadocia.
   
   
7. Seljuk Turkish Caravanserais (Yellow Caravanserai)
   
   The San Han is an old Seljuk Turkish caravanserai, located about three miles from Avanos in the lonely rolling hills around the town, but if you're a hiker, an hour's walk will bring you to this old way station for caravans, now surrounded by bare hills and a sheep or two.
   
   This Turkish caravanserai is, of course, in ruins, but most of the decoration is still in place. The outer walls have been pillaged recently in order to get a stone for the new bridge across the river in Avanos. These caravanserais were major outposts on trade routes and, befitting their importance, included stables, sleeping quarters, a mosque, a treasury, storerooms, and baths. The Seljuks constructed them all over their empire m order to facilitate trade, and from the looks of the San Han, defense. Seljuk caravanserai is also must see the place in your tours of Cappadocia.
   
   
8. Zelve Open-Air Museum
   
   Walking by Zelve Open Air Museum is an encounter of the Cappadocia of old with its knobbly topped stone cliffs speckled with cave houses. The settlement started life as a monastery in the ninth century and by the twentieth century was a flourishing hamlet. Due to stone and erosion tumble risks, the hamlet had to be left in 1952. Now the whole valley is a museum. There are several chapels that are intriguing to see - the Uzumlu Kilise being the most complete - and a stone cut mosque that is quite scenic.
   
   Although the cliff side trails are meandering down, investigating the fire blackened insides of the cave houses and staring at the spectacular views over the surrounding countryside. This is a magnificent place but you need to take a private tour guide because its big and but it's amazing!  
   
   
9. Pasabag
   
   The mushroom shaped stone needles of Pasabag Valley have managed to get one of the most renowned landmarks of Cappadocia. During the early Byzantine period religious community have been disciples of St Simeon Stylite dedicated their lives to their very own stylite practices here. Rather than columns, however, monk cells were carved by them high up in the pinnacles to lead a hermetic life of prayer. Among these monks, cells can be seen. Pasabag is gorgeous especially if you take a look at in Cappadocia balloon tours. 
   
   
10. Red and Rose Valley 
    
    The most amazing intertwining valleys of Cappadocia lie between the Goreme and Cavusin you'll see in your Balloon Tours in Cappadocia. Here the rippling and rolling stone face out arc through the countryside in a palette of pale yellow, pink and orange cliffs, formed by volcanic explosions and millennia of water and wind erosion. Between the cliffs are verdant orchards, vineyards and vegetable plots nevertheless tended by local farmers while carved into the stone are hermit hideouts which date back to the Byzantine age and concealed churches.
    
    So it is the perfect chance to catch your walking shoes and go out and find tons of hiking trails. Three particular attractions in Rose Valley are the Kolonlu Kilise, Haclı Kilise with its large cross carved into the cave ceiling, and the Uc Haclı Kilise with its amazingly preserved ceiling carvings and impressive frescoes. Enjoy your Cappadocia sightseeing tours and the top 10 things to do in Cappadocia Tours.