Cappadocia, Turkey – A Landscape Carved by Nature and Time

Cappadocia is one of those rare places where the landscape seems to belong partly to nature and partly to imagination.

Set high on the plateau of Central Anatolia in Turkey, its valleys are filled with extraordinary pillars, cones, and strangely sculpted formations known as fairy chimneys. Cliffs rise above twisting ravines, settlements disappear into the rock, and entire hillsides have been hollowed out to create houses, churches, and hidden chambers.

It is a landscape unlike almost anywhere else in the world.

The historical region of Cappadocia extends across a considerable area of Central Anatolia, although its most celebrated landscapes are concentrated around Nevsehir, Goreme, Urgup and Avanos. Here, nature and human occupation have become so closely intertwined that it can sometimes be difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins.

The story began millions of years before people arrived.

Repeated volcanic eruptions from the great mountains of Central Anatolia covered the region in layers of ash and volcanic material. Over immense periods of time, this material hardened into relatively soft rock known as tuff. Rain, wind, frost, and flowing water then began slowly carving through it, creating deep valleys and leaving behind isolated pinnacles and towers.

Some of the most distinctive formations developed where harder volcanic rock protected the softer material beneath from erosion. The result is the remarkable collection of capped pillars that have become known as fairy chimneys, or peri bacalari in Turkish.

It’s a wonderfully fitting name.

Some fairy chimneys rise like narrow towers; others resemble mushrooms, cones, or enormous stone figures. Seen together across the valleys, they create a landscape that appears almost deliberately designed, although their architect was simply geology working across millions of years.

Human beings eventually discovered that the same softness that allowed nature to sculpt Cappadocia also made its rock remarkably easy to carve.

People excavated rooms directly into cliffs and pinnacles, gradually creating homes, storerooms, places for animals, and entire settlements within the volcanic tuff. New chambers could be added when required, while the thick rock provided insulation against the extremes of the Anatolian climate.

Cappadocia therefore became not simply a place where people lived among the rocks, but a landscape in which they increasingly lived within them.

Its human history reaches deep into antiquity.

Central Anatolia was home to some of the earliest complex societies of the ancient Near East and later formed part of the world of the Hittites. Cappadocia subsequently came under Persian rule, and its name appears in Old Persian sources in the form Katpatuka. A popular tradition interprets this as the “land of beautiful horses”, although the true origin of the name remains uncertain.

Following the campaigns of Alexander the Great in the fourth century BCE, Cappadocia retained a considerable degree of independence under its own rulers. A separate Cappadocian kingdom survived through much of the Hellenistic period before the region was eventually incorporated into the Roman Empire as a province in 17 CE.

Yet it was during the centuries that followed that Cappadocia acquired another identity, one that remains visible throughout its valleys.

Christianity became deeply rooted here.

By the fourth century CE, Cappadocia had emerged as an important centre of Christian thought. The region was associated with influential theologians such as Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, and Gregory of Nyssa, collectively remembered as the Cappadocian Fathers.

At the same time, communities increasingly carved churches, chapels, and monasteries into the soft rock.

Nowhere is this extraordinary tradition more accessible than at the Goreme Open-Air Museum.

Set within a compact valley surrounded by the characteristic formations of Cappadocia, Goreme contains an exceptional concentration of rock-cut churches, chapels, monastic spaces, kitchens and refectories. Monastic activity in the wider area developed from the early centuries of Christianity and continued for many centuries, with particularly intensive occupation between the fourth and thirteenth centuries.

The simplicity of the exterior spaces can be deceptive.

Step inside some of the churches and the bare volcanic landscape gives way to interiors once covered in colour.

Biblical scenes, saints, and angels appear across vaulted ceilings and walls. Some early chapels were decorated with simple red geometric designs and symbols; later churches contain elaborate fresco cycles, particularly from the tenth and eleventh centuries, when Byzantine religious art flourished in Cappadocia.

Among the best known is the Dark Church, or Karanlik Kilise, whose limited natural light helped preserve its remarkably vivid frescoes. The scenes remain among the finest examples of medieval painting surviving in Cappadocia.

There is something particularly compelling about these churches.

Elsewhere, great religious buildings were constructed from blocks of stone carried and assembled by generations of builders. In Cappadocia, architecture often worked in reverse. Space was created by removing the mountain itself.

Columns, arches, domes, and apses could be carved from the living rock, sometimes imitating architectural forms normally built from stone or brick.

The landscape became the building material.

Even more mysterious are Cappadocia’s underground cities.

Beneath parts of the region lie astonishing networks of rooms, passageways and shafts extending through multiple subterranean levels. The best known are Derinkuyu and Kaymakli, both included within the UNESCO World Heritage property.

Their beginnings remain difficult to date precisely. Some underground spaces may have ancient origins, but the complexes were enlarged and adapted over long periods. They contained living areas, storage chambers and ventilation shafts; narrow tunnels connected different levels, and heavy circular stone doors could seal passages when danger threatened.

These were not cities in the modern sense, permanently occupied by vast populations below ground. Rather, parts of the complexes could provide shelter and security during periods of instability.

Their scale is nevertheless remarkable.

To descend through their narrow passages is to encounter another Cappadocia entirely: not the open valleys and towering fairy chimneys above, but a hidden landscape created within the earth.

That contrast is one of the region’s great attractions.

Cappadocia can be explored from below ground, from paths winding through its valleys, or from high above.

For me, one of the most memorable ways was by hot-air balloon.

I spent about an hour slowly drifting above the Cappadocian landscape in the early morning summer light. From the basket, the strange geography of the region suddenly made sense on a much larger scale.

Fairy chimneys rose from the valleys below; villages and cultivated fields appeared between eroded ridges, while countless openings in the cliffs revealed where generations of people had carved themselves into the landscape.

Seen from above, Cappadocia seemed even more extraordinary.

The balloon moved quietly across terrain shaped over millions of years, yet everywhere below were signs of human adaptation. Nature had created the forms; people had continually found new ways to inhabit them.

That relationship is ultimately what makes Cappadocia so remarkable.

In 1985, Goreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as a mixed cultural and natural property. The protected landscape includes Goreme and its surrounding valleys, rock-cut sanctuaries, traditional settlements, and the underground cities of Kaymakli and Derinkuyu.

Cappadocia is sometimes described as lunar or otherworldly, but neither description quite captures it.

Its wonder comes from something more tangible: volcanoes created the rock, erosion shaped it, and generations of people transformed it into somewhere they could live, worship, and seek refuge.

Nature began the story millions of years ago.

Human imagination carried it forward.

Together they created Cappadocia.

View a selection of images of Cappadocia

All images, text, and content © Steven Sklifas.