Travel Destinations - Cappadocia

The Cappadocia region is the place where nature and history are most beautifully integrated in the world. While geographical events were creating the Fairy Chimneys, people also carved houses and churches inside these fairy chimneys, decorated them with frescoes, and carried the traces of thousands of years old civilizations to the present day.

Strabo, one of the writers of the Ancient Period during the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus, states the borders of the Cappadocia Region as a wide region extending to the Taurus Mountains in the south, Aksaray in the west, Malatya in the east and the Eastern Black Sea coast in the north in his 17-book 'Geographika' (Anatolia XII, XIII, XIV).

Today's Cappadocia Region is the area covered by the provinces of Nevşehir, Aksaray, Niğde, Kayseri and Kırşehir. The rocky Cappadocia Region, which is a narrower area, consists of Uçhisar, Ürgüp, Avanos, Göreme, Derinkuyu, Kaymaklı, Ihlara and its surroundings.

Traditional Cappadocian houses and pigeon houses carved into the rocks express the authenticity of the region. These houses were built on the slopes in the 19th century either from rocks or cut stones.

Stone, which is the only architectural material of the region, can be processed very easily because it is soft after it comes out of the quarry due to the volcanic structure of the region, but after contact with air, it hardens and turns into a very durable building material. has received. The material of both the courtyard and the house doors is wood.

The upper part of the arched doors is decorated with stylized ivy or rosette motifs. Pigeon houses in the region are small structures built in the late 19th and 18th centuries. Some of the dovecotes, which are important in terms of showing the art of Islamic painting, were built as monasteries or churches. The surface of the dovecotes is decorated with rich ornaments and inscriptions by local artists.