Turkiye Aksaray

Aksaray sits on the western rim of Cappadocia at 980 metres. Hasan Dagi stands over it, a dormant volcano of 3,268 metres. Istanbul has an Aksaray too; this is the other.

The town and its names

The Hittites had a settlement here, the Romans called it Archelais, and the Seljuks renamed it Aksaray, the white palace. Ibn Battuta came through in the fourteenth century and admired the gardens. Little of that is standing.

What survives is Seljuk and Karamanid. The Egri Minare leans three degrees off vertical, thirty metres of red brick the town calls its own Pisa. The museum keeps mummies out of the Ihlara churches, dated between the tenth and thirteenth centuries, one of them a cat.

The road out of town

Aksaray is a gate rather than a destination, and the good things are a drive away.

• Ihlara Valley — the gorge, forty kilometres southeast in Aksaray's own Guzelyurt district.
• Sultanhani — the largest Seljuk caravanserai in Anatolia, dated 1229, forty kilometres west on the Konya road.
• Asikli Hoyuk — a farming village lived in some 10,000 years ago, among the oldest known in Anatolia.
• Tuz Golu — the salt lake north of the city, dried to a walkable white crust by late summer.

What sells from here is the green route, down into Ihlara and back past Selime. Most of it is bought in Goreme. Starting from Aksaray takes about forty minutes off each end of the drive.

Practical

• Driving. The sights lie forty kilometres apart in three directions, and there is no bus that joins them up.
• Weather. Freezing nights and snow from December into March; dry afternoons above 30C in July and August.
• Hasan Dagi. It holds snow into late spring, which is when the plain below is at its greenest.
• Language. English is thin outside the hotels, and the tour desks are all on the far side of Cappadocia.
• Cash. Normal in town, useful at the Ihlara gate and in the village restaurants along the river.