Cappadocia: The Green Tour - Derinkuyu Underground City

In Cappadocia a bunch of tours are offered, some of which are named after colours. I went on the Green Tour. It is a daily tour to the Derinkuru Underground City, Ihlara Canyon, the Selime Monastary, and an Onyx Factory. Above is my tour guide. She brought us to Pidgeon Valley to start the tour with an view of the valley and a brief explanation about Turkey's long history.


Apparently a number of photo albums dedicated to Cappadocia will have a picture of the view from this cliff.


Village in the valley.


A cave house.


Boncuk, to protect against the evil eye (aka Nazar).


Entering the Derinkuyu underground city. There are seven floors which are accessible to tourists. The rest of the floors haven't or couldn't be excavated. There are an estimate 36 identified underground cities in Cappadocia.


Derinkuyu dates back to Hittite times, about 4000 years ago. Back then times were rough and so Turkish Christians escaped invaders, such as the Arabs, by hiding in these extensive underground cities. Each level can be closed off by round stone doors which roll into place.

Above is an old well. Other rooms include kitchens, holding areas for domestic farm animals, and troughs for pressing grapes.


A gazillion tours come through this tourist trap and so it was pretty crowded. The tour guides are experts at keeping people moving from room to room and floor to floor.


A vent to the surface. It's pretty damp in the caves and people who hid here probably had to deal with some respiratory diseases. It is thought that those hiding could stay underground for up to six months.


This is the school room. It is the biggest room we saw.


The staircases were quite narrow and so one person goes up or down at a time. Since there were so many tour groups visiting, when you got to the top or bottom of the staircase there would be at least 30 people waiting for you to get out of the way so they could take their turn. Furthermore, there are probably at least five different languages being spoken in the underground city at a time. That is, there are tours in English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, etc.


Ahhhhh, the great outdoors. Just outside the entrance/exit to Derinkuyu are tourist shops selling souvenirs. These dolls are made by hand and represent the carpet makers holding the wool needed to make their carpets. Central Anatolia has a well-established history of carpet making.