3. Day Cappadocia V

After arriving on time from our tour for breakfast, we first ate extensively and rested until the afternoon, as the midday sun is unbearable.

We decided to go to Kaymakli in the afternoon and visit Underground City. We took the bus from Otogar in Göreme and then went to Nevsehir and from there another dolmus to Kaymakli. You can visit 4 of the 8 underground floors.

It was very interesting and almost hard to believe that thousands of people once lived there.

After our trip, I went for a meal and a drink.

Info:
Kaymaklis ancient name was Enegup. Caves may have first been built in the soft volcanic rock by the Phrygians, an Indo-European people, in the 8th–7th centuries BC,. When the Phrygian language died out in Roman times, replaced with Greek, to which it was related, the inhabitants, now converted to Christianity, expanded their caverns adding the chapels and Greek inscriptions.

The city was greatly expanded and deepened in the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) era, when it was used for protection from Muslim Arab raids during the four centuries of Arab–Byzantine wars (780–1180). The city was connected with Derinkuyu underground city through miles of tunnels. These cities continued to be used by the Christian inhabitants as protection from the Mongolian incursions of Timur in the 14th century.

After the region fell to the Seljuk Turks of Persia, the cities were used as refuges from the Turkish Muslim rulers, and as late as the 20th century the inhabitants, now called Rûm ('Eastern Romans') by their Ottoman Turkish rulers, were still using the underground cities to escape periodic waves of Ottoman persecution.Read more