Cappadocia: Private Ihlara and Underground City Day Tour

As Cappadocia’s largest underground city, Derinkuyu has approximately seven floors and runs 85m deep. It contains all the usual rooms found in an underground city: stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories, churches, wineries, etc. The compound even includes a missionary school, a large room featuring a vaulted ceiling and study rooms set apart on the left. Vertical staircases take care of the descent down from the third and fourth floors, leading to a cruciform plan church on the lowest floor. The 55m deep ventilation shaft was also used as a well. To protect dwellers from poisoning during raids, some floors were left without surface access. Although Derinkuyu Underground City was opened to visitors in 1965, to this day, only 10% of the city can be visited.

Early Christians constructed their rock houses and temples by carving the tuffs in the valley of Ihlara, where the Melendiz River runs. Because of the waters of the Ilhara, the people are called “Peristrema:”"The people of circulating waters.” Searching for the source of the water, in Ihlara, is like trying to reveal the meaning of life. It takes 2.5 hours to walk from the Ihlara Vadisi to Belisirma, and about 3 hours to walk from Belisirma to Selime.

After trekking through the Ihlara Valley, visitors will be treated to a much-needed smorgasbord lunch in Belisirma, featuring a mixture of Turkish and Western food and including dessert.

A stop on the outskirts of Goreme reveals Pigeon Valley, with centuries-old pigeon houses carved from the cliffs. In those times, many farmers used pigeon manure as fertilizer for their crops.

A vast kitchen and a soaring chimney are a few of the features that set Selime Monastery apart. The rock-cut structure is a church surrounded by a gallery, also featuring stables with feeding troughs and other evidence of the troglodyte lifestyle.

Solidified lava streams from the Neocene period have shaped the magnificent ash and tuff landscape of Goreme. These thousands of years of erosion have created a gorgeous lunar landscape, full of fairy chimneys of all colors.