Cappadocia Turkey. You’ve seen it on Instagram. You’ve seen it on Pinterest. That peaceful middle eastern desert scenery peppered with unique rock formations and caves, with hot air balloons in the sky with beautiful influencers seated at breakfast. Cappadocia is packed with extensive open air museums, cave hotels with picturesque sunrises, sunset excursions in the valley, wine houses, and plenty of shopping and antiquing. The region has one of the most unique geological features, and historical and cultural legacies, in the world.
History: Cappadocia was home to the Hittites in 1600 BC and its end was part of the Bronze Age Collapse. It’s argued amongst historians whether the Hittites of the Bible are the same Hittites. Some may be similar groups that existed when the empire had already splintered. Small feudal states developed and were eventually annexed into the Neo-Assyrian empire. Cappadocians are mentioned in the Bible in the book of Acts actually. The kingdom of Cappadocia came about when Alexander the Great ended the Persian Empire, followed by the Roman Empire, then Byzantium. It stayed out of conflicts until about the 7th century AD but then was involved during the Muslim conquests and crusades (remember, the fall of Constantinople was in 1453 for context). Then during that time, it kind of chilled out under an Armenian kingdom, then came under control by Seljuk Turks around a thousand years ago, and then lastly the Ottoman Empire when Constantinople fell.
As much information as this seems, there were even more conflicts/tribes/ ethnic groups/kingdoms involved in this region than I just gave you, and that was my best stab at a concise abbreviated version of it. All this to say, there is a crazy amount of world history in this one geographical spot in the world. The extensive underground cities, cave churches, monasteries, and homes, are unique features that developed out of some of these regional conflicts as well and the subsequent periods of peace. Some of the cities had defense features against the raids, like out of an Indiana Jones film, with trap doors and the rest. We didn’t get a chance to do the cities too because we didn’t know how long the Goreme museum would take, but here’s a travel blog telling you to look into it.
Here are my top 5 activity recommendations for a visit.
- Sunrise and the balloons
The balloons and the sunrises are truly magical. Some seasons they’re cancelled when the winds aren’t favorable but we were fortunate to have two gorgeous sunrises during our stay. Cappadocia might have been one of the most peaceful places I’ve been in my life. The rugged plateau atmosphere was so serene and I remember when we arrived how little noise there was at all. Of course, being remote, there were few vehicles and planes, with the closest airport being an hour from the hotels. Plus these hotels nestled off of these historic caves at the tops of these hills provide a great view.
2. Goreme Open Air Museum
I honestly could have spent a week here. The museum is so large, that to be able to have time to go through all the information and see everything would take a lot more time than we had. Some of the locations are not that far of a walk from the village center. Some of the churches we took a cab to the other entrances. There were other underground city attractions, Roman and Ottoman era structures that we didn’t even get to. I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned with Turkey, is that there’s just so much to see you’re going to want to take future trips.
The caves vary from being spaces where inhabitants would hide during raids, to monastic churches with refectories (a place to eat in a monastery) to complex underground cities. People were able to dig these caves because of the type of rock there.
The early churches range in age. One of the great debates in early Christian history was whether or not churches should have images because of concern for idol worship, so some of them you’ll see earlier examples with frescoes composed of just some simple red shapes to ornate murals with lots of imagery. I highly recommend researching the many different museums in addition to Goreme, for example Zelve Open Air, Kaymakli Underground City, Derinkuyu Underground City, and there are some Roman cut castles and Ottoman structures as well. Pictured in the gallery below you can see how many churches there were part of just one museum. Certain churches like the Dark Church charge an additional fee.
I know people do hike in Cappadocia, and we started one, but it was closed off at this one area that we needed to cross to get to the valleys we wanted to see. However, everything in these open air museums is basically a beautiful scenic hike in and of itself.
Just as a heads up, some of these locations are not all that accessible for everyone and require a degree of mobility. It would be challenging to do this tour with my parents or with a stroller because it’s a lot of uneven, and at times slippery surfaces, and made hundreds of years before building codes. The ladder pictured below, which the scale is off because of the image perspective, has almost knee height non-standard steps. At times, you’d have to crawl through small tunnels to see some of the sites, pictured above.
You’re not able to take photos or video of any kind, flash and non-flash photos, in most of the churches; there are signs indicating which ones aren’t photo friendly or there’s a security guard there to inform you. It’s possibly why it’s not quite as popular on image heavy social media platforms. Definitely worth seeing with your own eyes though.
Side note: you’ll also see when you’re there that the murals have undergone some serious iconoclasm; eyes have been removed or whole sections of some of the churches have been destroyed with what looks like a metal rake unfortunately.
3.) Horseback riding: Ok, so even though I’m a mega history nerd, I have to say, riding a horse through the different valleys in Cappadocia for a sunset trail ride was one of the most magical experiences I’ve ever had. One of the hypothesized roots of the word “Cappadocia” is “Land of the Pretty Horses,” or “Land of the Beautiful Horses,” from Persian. Naturally, we couldn’t possibly go to this region of the world without seeing the descendants of these famous beautiful horses. I’m not an expert on horses but the ancestor of the modern day horse breeds are probably the Turkomen and/or Arabian breeds. They’re like, the greyhound of horses with beautiful shiny coats and these were such lovely horses, even though we were doing a simple trail ride.
The weather was absolutely perfect. The autumn sunset illuminating colorful pink, red and yellow rock valleys really competes with the beautiful sunrises in this part of the world for jaw dropping, once in a lifetime experiences. Seeing the valley on horseback is a really great tempo for truly experiencing the desert fully.
I told them I’d never ridden a horse before and they gave me a great trail horse. My husband said he had some experience and they gave him a rather adorably temperamental horse who sometimes stopped to snack on a bush or felt like exploring on her own.
What a ride it was! The hotel we were staying at actually set us up for the excursion, and it was an awesome family ran company. A shuttle picked us up. Be early because the timing of the ride for the sunset is important and you can’t be late.
We stopped at the famous Valley of Love for some refreshments they had waiting for us at the top of the hill, to rest the horses for a bit, take photos with the sunset, and then we finished the ride with the remaining light. I’ll never forget it.
4.) Wine: The wine in Cappadocia was unexpected. I didn’t know the region had such great wine but apparently wine has been found in tombs dating back to thousands of years BC. The combinations of the environmental factors has made viticulture a feature of the region. Because of the wine house we went to wasn’t fully open, we tasted some of the wine quickly and brought a bunch of bottles back to the cave hotel. Pro-Tip, bring a wine opener with you because we oddly had a problem borrowing one at more than one hotel we stayed at throughout Turkey.
5) Shopping: Like any tourist destination, Cappadocia has lots of shopping. There’s the Instagram/ Pinterest famous rug store and gift shops in the village center and at the museums. Also we came across great antique shops. The fun thing about antique shops in central Anatolia, they have some OLD stuff….tons of old coins, and everything from housewares and furniture to personal items. We had a blast looking around.
There is a lively little village square walkable down from most of the cave hotels. There are a good number of restaurant options. It has a sleepy vacation oriented Turkish town feel, with some spunky colorful uplighting on the rock formations.
A couple practical travel tidbits for the area. The cave hotels are located approximately an hour from the nearest airport. I recommend renting a car. We randomly hopped on a shuttle that served several hotels; most of the popular ones are in the same general area. If we didn’t happen upon it I actually don’t know what we would have done because we couldn’t get a taxi or rideshare service the evening we landed, which might have been pandemic related and not always the case.
The roads are such in Kayseri that it’s not like renting a car and having to drive in chaotic Istanbul. Without having your own car, you have to organize transportation at the hotel which we were lucky enough to have done the night for the shuttle to the ranch, but the lobby was very busy in the morning. If you go to the different locations of the museums, scheduling to get picked up was a process. We lucked out and just were able to keep our driver as we went around. I think if you’re just going to do a couple excursions and walk downtown, it’s not so bad to shuttle there, but if you want to check out more museums, renting a car would have been much more efficient.
Hope that helps! Hope you enjoy your trip to Cappadocia Turkey!
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