Turkey - Cappadocia

In antiquity, Cappadocia included all of central Anatolia, stretching as far as Ankara in the north and Adana in the south. Today the region includes the area in and around a small triangle formed by Ürgüp, Avanos, and Nevsehir, where the canyons are the deepest and the pigments in the rock-cut churches are the richest.

While it's possible to visit the major sites of the area in 2 full days with the assistance of a local tour operator, a few days here (AND with the assistance of a good operator here - there are many) are without a doubt, the better choice.

The tours can be tailor-made (and therefore more pricey), or you can choose from a stable of standard issues. Typical day tours include: 1) a visit to the Open Air Museums of Zelve and Göreme, overviews of the valleys from Pasabag and Dervent, a climb up to the top of Üçhisar Fortress, and an optional pottery demonstration in Avanos, and 2) visits to the underground cities of Kaymakli and Derinkuyu and a leisurely 4km (2 1/2-mile) hike through the monastery-rich gorge of Ihlara Valley.

Tours may also include horseback riding; more challenging sports such as mountain biking can be easily arranged, but these are generally not advertised. Operating with the most experience in the region is Argeus, Istiklal Cad. 13, Ürgüp (tel. 0384/341-4688; fax 0384/341-4888; http://www.argeus.com.tr/), which provides expert guidance on Cappadocia and Ankara, as well as destinations throughout Turkey. Regular group tours, including all museum entrance fees and lunch in a restaurant, cost 101YTL ($75) per person for groups of six or more; private tours cost 300TYL ($220) and get cheaper the more people you have. Argeus is also the local representative of Turkish Airlines.

For a more off-the-beaten track experience, contact Cappadocia Tours, Istiklal Cad. 19/9, Ürgüp (tel. 0384/341-7485; http://www.cappadociatours.com/), which is the companion agency to Gamirasu Hotel. Led by Süleyman Çakir, tours and hotel stays will be assured the highest of quality; think visits to local village events and historical hikes lead by Süleyman or a professional archaeologist. Expect to pay 216YTL ($160) per day for between 2 and 10 passengers including the guide and driver.

For an additional 34YTL ($25) per person, all entrance fees will be included (these do add up), as well as vehicle expenses and an a la carte lunch, including wine.
Aiming for the middle ground is Stone Park Tourism, Istiklal Cad. 19/E, Ürgüp (tel. 0384/341-8897; fax 0384/341-5348; http://www.stonepark.com.tr/), at about 88YTL ($65) per person per day. As for budget outfitters, they come and go, and vie for your business around the bus station.

Cappadocia's main attraction and the customary starting point for an overview of what the region has to offer, the Göreme Open Air Museum is a monastic complex composed of churches, rectories, and dwellings, and one of the earliest centers for religious education.
The practice of monasticism was developed by St. Basil the Great, bishop of Caesarea (Kayseri) in the 4th century, as a reaction to his increased disillusionment with the materialism of the Church. St. Basil's definition of monastic life, based on the idea that men should live in small, self-sufficient units with an emphasis on poverty, obedience, labor, and religious devotion, took root in Cappadocia, later becoming the basis for the Orthodox monastic system.
St. Basil, his brother St. Gregory of Nyssa, and St. Gregory of Nazianzoz (St. Gregorios the Theologian), greatly influenced the course of religious thought through their writings, contributing to the development of Eastern Orthodoxy. In his extensive writings St. Basil describes the nature of the Holy Spirit as a trilogy, while St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote of the dogma of the Virgin Mary, and St. Gregory of Nazianzoz developed the thesis on Jesus as a representative of the indivisible nature of the human and divine. Because of their contributions, Cappadocia became known as "the land of the three saints," but was soon divided in two in A.D. 371 when Emperor Valens rejected Basil's thesis on Jesus as the son of God.

There are at least 10 churches and chapels in the museum area dating between A.D. 900 and 1200, each one named (after a prominent attribute) by the local villagers who were exploring these caves long before there was an entrance fee. The paintings and decoration represent a flowering of a uniquely Cappadocian artistic style, while the Byzantine architectural features of the churches, like arches, columns, and capitals, are interesting in that not one of them is necessary structurally. The best way to approach the site is to begin in a counterclockwise direction toward a clearly marked path.

During the Iconoclastic period, many of the frescoes and paintings were damaged, while the eyes of the images were scratched out by the local Turkish population superstitious of the "evil eye."
Past a small rock tower or Monks' Convent is the Church of St. Basil, whose entrance is hollowed out with niches for small graves. This is a common feature of Cappadocian churches and it's still not uncommon to reach down and come up with a knuckle bone every now and again in the more remote valleys. Another recurring theme in Cappadocian churches is the image of St. George slaying the dragon. St. George was considered a local hero, as local lore equated the dragon with a monster on the summit of Mount Erciyes. The church is decorated with scenes of Christ, with St. Basil and St. Theodore depicted on the north wall.

The Church with the Apple (Elmali Kilise) is one of the smaller churches in the area, carved in the sign of a Greek cross with four irregular pillars supporting a central dome. The church was restored in 1991; however, the frescoes continue to chip off, revealing a layer of earlier paintings underneath. Paintings depict scenes of the saints, bishops, and martyrs, and to the right of the altar, a Last Supper with the symbolic fish (the letters of the word fish in Greek stand for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, the Savior"). The name of the church is believed to refer to a reddish orb in the left hand of the Archangel Michael in the dome of the main apse, although there's also speculation that there used to be an apple tree at the entrance to the church.

Santa Barbara was an Egyptian saint imprisoned by her father to protect her from the influences of Christianity. When she nevertheless found a way to practice her faith, her father tortured and killed her. The Church of Santa Barbara, probably built as a tribute, is a cross-domed church with three apses, with mostly crudely painted geometrical patterns in red ocher believed to be symbolic in nature. The wall with the large locust probably represents evil, warded off by the protection of two adjacent crosses. The repetitive line of bricks above the rooster in the upper right-hand corner, symbolically warding off the evil influences of the devil, represents the Church.

The Snake Church is a simple barrel-vaulted church with a low ceiling and long nave. One fresco represents Saints Theodore and George slaying the dragon (looking suspiciously like a snake), with Emperor Constantine the Great and his mother Helena depicted holding the "True Cross." Legend has it that she discovered the cross upon which Jesus was crucified after seeing it in a dream, and that a piece of the cross is still buried in the foundations of the Ayasofya in Istanbul. Other sections of the cross are in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and in St. Peter's in Rome. Another interesting portrait is the one of St. Onuphrius on the upper wall to the right of the entrance. The saint, a popular subject in medieval art, lived the life of a hermit in the Egyptian desert near Thebes and is usually depicted with a long gray beard and a fig leaf over his privates.

Until the 1950s the Dark Church (Karanlik Kilise) was used as a pigeon house. After 14 years of scraping pigeon droppings off the walls, these newly restored frescoes, depicting scenes from the New Testament, are the best preserved in all of Cappadocia and a fine example of 11th-century Byzantine art. Because light is allowed in through only one small opening, the richness of the pigments has survived the test of time. At the time of this writing, the additional 5.50YTL ($4) admission fee for entry into the church had been suspended.
Cut into the same rock as the Dark Church and accessible via a metal walkway, the Church with Sandals (Çarikli Kilise) takes its name from the two imprints on the floor inside the entrance. In the land of truth-stretching, these footprints have been given some weighty religious significance, but the fact is, they're just footprints and all of those stories are just more creative embellishment. The church is carved into a simple cross plan with intersecting barrel vaults. The frescoes, which date to the 11th century, depict the Nativity, the Baptism, the Adoration of the Magi, and other New Testament themes.

The last thing to see before exiting the museum is the Nunnery or Girls' Tower (Kizlar Kalesi), a six-story convent cut into the rock with a system of tunnels, stairways, and corridors. The convent housed up to 300 nuns, whose proximity spawned rumors of a tunnel connecting the tower and the Monks' Convent to the right of the museum entrance.
About 5m (17 ft.) outside the exit to the museum site on the right is The Buckle Church (Tokali Kilise), the largest rock-cut church and the one with the most sensational collection of frescoes in all of Cappadocia. Of all of the narrations of scenes from the Bible in the region, these are painted with the most detail and use the richest colors.

The Buckle Church is a complex formed of four chambers: the Old Church, the New Church, the Paracclesion, and the Lower Church. The Old Church dates to the 10th century, with pale hues of red and green painted in strips to represent scenes from the New Testament. Panels of rich indigo painted with pigments from the lapis stone dominate the New Church, carved out of the eastern wall of the Old Church and decorated with Eastern-style arches and a series of arcades. The Paracclesion is a chapel with a single apse, and the Lower Church has three aisles and a burial space or krypto.

The high plateau behind Tokali Church brings you to Kiliçlar Valley, named "Valley of the Swords" for the jagged formations that seem to slice into the sky. This is a favorite spot for hikers because of its high cliffs, deep ravines, and vineyards, in addition to a tunnel that forms part of an old drainage system. The cliff walls are dotted with dovecotes or pigeon houses hollowed out of the rock to harvest valuable fertilizer -- pigeon droppings are rich in nitrogen -- by area farmers. There are several old churches in this valley, but they are closed to the public. The best way to get to the valley is to enter along an access road from the road between the Göreme Museum and the town.

The highest peak in the region and the most prominent land formation, the Üçhisar Castle is a larger-than-life sculpture. A climb up the 120 steps to the summit of the fortress is a logical introduction to the rocky scapes of Cappadocia. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Byzantine army took advantage of the natural elevation of three of the area's rock formations and used them as natural fortresses. Üçhisar, together with Ortahisar and a rock castle at Ürgüp (now in ruins), provided the means for an early-warning system using mirrors and lights, sending messages among the fortresses and as far afield as Istanbul.

Today the outer layers of Üçhisar's rock have been washed away by erosion to reveal a honeycombed structure of tunnels and cavities, rising above the man-made facades of the modern semi-troglodyte village. Recently discovered was a secret tunnel leading to the riverbed, which provided an emergency water supply in the event of an attack.
This area near the village of Uchisar is named for the thousands of pigeon houses carved into the rock. It is a surreal vision: an outrageously phallic landscape straight out of a Salvador Dalí painting. The conical formations are the result of volcanic eruptions that took place millions of years ago. Eons of wind, rain and other forces of nature have eaten away at the volcanic rock creating tufa, a soft and malleable stone. Many of these cones, known as fairy chimneys, contain caves and labyrinths.

As early as the third century, those chimneys became a hiding place for early Christians who fled persecution from the Romans, and then later from raiding Muslims. They dug deep into the rock, carving out underground cities that went eight stories below ground, as well as thousands of cave chapels and monastery cells. As recently as 20 years ago, most of the cave dwellings were empty — abandoned for more modern, concrete homes. In the last several years, though, affluent Turks and foreigners have started turning them into second homes and, in a few cases, boutique hotels like the Cappadocia Cave Suites and the recently opened Anatolia Houses.
URGUP AREA - 23km (14 miles) east of Nevsehir; 6.5km (4 miles) east of Göreme.

Of the major villages in Cappadocia, Ürgüp strikes a balance between preserving its Anatolian traditions and cultivating an unobtrusive yet irresistible tourist infrastructure. To meet the rising demand, hoteliers are all too eager to create magical and otherworldly accommodations for an increasingly upscale market. Crumbled hovels are snatched up for a song, human odors of food and sweat are scraped away with the top layers of porous tufa, and perfectly charming romantic retreats materialize. Of course, one day, all of those abandoned terraced houses will sprout brand-new facades, a gentrification process that, while polished and attractive, will probably be devoid of the character that drew us here in the first place. The process has already begun, particularly in the wake of press provided by the highly popular Turkish soap opera, Asmali Konak. But for now, Ürgüp remains a tranquil yet convenient corner of Cappadocia that makes an ideal base from which to explore the surrounding valleys.

Near Ürgüp and carved into a uniquely pink tufa, Zelve was once home to one of the largest communities in the region, inhabited by a Greek population until the 1922 population exchange, when Greeks and Turks were "repatriated" to their mother countries. When Muslims took over the valley, a mosque was hewn out of the rock, and stands near the entrance.

The first known inhabitants of the valley were monks, and although we can say for sure that they carved out the chapels, it's unclear who first began hollowing out the valley. The cave dwellings were used by local villagers up until 1952, when the structures were determined to be unsafe and the villagers were moved en masse over to nearby Aktepe, or New Zelve.

Now a national park, Zelve consists of three consecutive valleys whose walls are riddled with living quarters, blind tunnels, passageways, and traps for protection against attacks. Footholds chiseled into the smooth vertical tufa require an agility once aimed at keeping out unwanted visitors, but now present a fantastic challenge to modern-day rock climbers. Those interested in hiking should set aside plenty of time to explore the area, following a path over the mountain to Red Valley, about 4km (2 1/2 miles) away. Exploring the caves can be exhilarating, challenging, and downright dangerous. Don't attempt anything fancy without a guide; Argeus offers excellent guided tours, but you can also arrange one through one of the many shops in town.

Wherever you see tour buses or souvenir stands, there's bound to be something interesting. Pasabag, also known as Valley of the Monks, is a forest of cone-shaped fairy chimneys more shocking and lifelike (not life-size) than most. Not surprisingly, it's a popular stop for photo ops.
The chimneys of Pasabag harbor a number of chapels and dwellings used by Christian hermits, the most prominent of which is a tri-level chapel with depictions of the life of St. Simeon. St. Simeon the Stylite lived a life of hardship and denial in Antioch around the 4th century, high atop a 15m (50-ft.) pillar. Later hermits were inspired to do the same, initiating a "stylite" movement of isolated living.