Full-Day Private Tour of Cappadocia's Highlights (Car&Guide )

Overview

What you’ll do

GOREME PANORAMA, The most magnificent landscape around Göreme has been formed from its solidified lava streams, its ash and tuff stone, all dating from Neocene period. It is criss-crossed by deep valleys formed by heavy erosion. This veritable lunar landscape distinguishes itself by its extensive geological formations. The highly typical morphological structures of Cappadocia are the result of thousands of years of continual erosion, which has shaped the tuff deposits into the strangest pyramids and cones.

UCHISAR is a troglodyte village situated 4 km east of Göreme. It is famous for the huge rock formation once used as a fortification. This extraordinary rock is the highest peak in the region and offers a magnificent panoramic view of the whole of Cappadocia with Mt. Erciyes in the distance.Most rooms in the castle are connected to each other with stairs, tunnels and passages. At the entrances of many rooms, there are millstone doors, just like the ones in the underground settlements, used to control access to these places. Due to erosion it is unfortunately not possible to reach all the rooms. Most of the rooms, located on the north side of the castle are still in use as pigeon houses (dovecotes) today. Farmers used these pigeon houses to collect the droppings of pigeons which is an excellent natural fertilizer for the orchards and vineyards.

KAYMAKLI UNDERGROUND CITY is built under the hill known as the Citadel of Kaymaklı and was opened to visitors in 1964. The people of Kaymaklı (Enegup in Greek) have built their houses around nearly 100 tunnels of the underground city. The inhabitants of the region still use the most convenient places in the tunnels as cellars, storage areas and stables, which they access through their courtyards. Kaymaklı underground city has low, narrow and sloping passages. While the underground city consists of 8 floors below ground, only 4 of them are open to the public today, in which the spaces are organized around ventilation shafts.

GOREME OPEN AIR MUSEUM, Cappadocia's most famous attraction, for good reason, is the Göreme Open Air Museum, a complex of medieval painted cave churches carved out by Orthodox monks. There are over 10 cave churches in the Göreme Open Air Museum. Along with rectories, dwellings, and a religious school, they form a large monastic complex carved out of a roughly ring-shaped rock formation in the otherworldly landscape of Cappadocia. The best way to explore the cave churches of Goreme is via the clearly marked path, working counterclockwise. Each one has a modern Turkish name, given by local villages based on a prominent feature.