Pick up: 09.30 – Drop Off: 17:00 (Approx)
LUNCH is included in the tour
Kaymakli Underground City:
Kaymaklı is 20 km from Nevşehir, and 9 km from Derinkuyu. The city’s old name of Enegüp was changed by the Anatolian Greeks to Enegobi, and changed again after 1924 by the Turks to Kaymaklı. The typology of the entry floor of this underground city can be dated to the Early Byzantine Era. Kaymaklı was discovered in 1964 and the first four storeys are open for tours. The four storeys of the city that have been cleaned and opened to visitors contain depots for food and wine, a church, ventilation shafts, water wells and round cylindrical doors. The doors, 55-60 cm thick, 1.70-1.75 m high and weighing 500 kilos, can only be opened from the inside. The rooms are connected to one another by narrow corridors. There was a cemetery above the city. Because not all the storey of Kaymaklı have been cleaned out, it is not possible to visit the entire city. There is only a single kitchen on the first floors. On the second floor of this underground city are hollows that were used as graves.
Soganli Valley:
Soganli Valley is the second largest early Christan settlement in Cappadocia. There are many cave cut churches. It is about 50km away from Urgup district. The way from Urgup to Soganli is unique and has many villages and remains from the 11th to the 18th centuries. The Soganli Valley is known for handcrafted dolls made by the women who live here. But the area has much more to offer than famous dolls. The valley is a natural beauty and 6 cave churches with well preserved frescos can be visited. The nicest one is the Karabas Church with its well preserved frescos, but also the Dome church, which looks like a castle, is very interesting
Keslik Monastery:
Keslik Monastery is located between Urgup and Kaymakli in Cappadocia, Turkey. The monastery was built in volcanic tuff stone and used in Byzantine Era until end of Ottoman Empire in the 1920s years. The monastery consists of a small church, cells and a frater, the dining room for the monks and a garden outside. Due to many robbers and military conflicts in the region, the monks had a safe room and when they were in need, they could close the door by a big and heavy millstone and escape in a tunnel under the monastery and garden. Traces of first settlement in Cappadocia can be dated back to 6500 BC. In the late Bronze Age named “Hatti”, after 1600 BC was the region part of the Hittite Empire. In the following time Cappadocia was under the reign of different kingdoms, e.g. Lydians, Persians and Alexander the Great until the region became in the year 18 AD part of the Roman Empire.
Monastery:
Mustafapaşa (the town of Mustafa Paşa, AKA Atatürk) is a town full of huge mansions with elaborately carved door and window-frames. Most date back to the 1880s, to a time when many local families had relatives working in the salt-fish trade in İstanbul (then Constantinople) and sending their money back to enrich their birthplace, in much the same way that Turks in Germany or Indians in Britain do today. It’s quite probable that there has not been such an intense period of building work between then and now when, suddenly, people seem to be waking up to the potential of the old houses and rushing to restore them. Just as people today whine about the noise and disruption of building work and sneer disparagingly at the overly grand tastes of the ‘nouveau riche’, so it’s possible to sit in the village square and imagine those same complaints echoing right the way back to the 19th century.
