5 Days in Cappadocia

Cappadocia's balloons are the most famous sight in Turkey, and with good reason. Before dawn, a minibus picks you up from your hotel and drives you to a field where crews are firing up dozens of balloons in the dark. You lift off as the sun comes up and drift for an hour over the valleys, sometimes skimming the tops of fairy chimneys, sometimes climbing high enough to see Mount Erciyes on the horizon, with up to 150 other balloons around you. On a good day, it's one of the best hours you'll have on any trip.

About 160 balloons fly here, run by 27 companies, and every morning the Turkish civil aviation authority decides whether the weather allows flights. Baskets hold 20 to 28 people, prices depend on the season and the size of the basket, and the flight ends with a glass of something fizzy and a certificate.

Most hotels in Göreme are carved into the rock, and most serve breakfast on a terrace with a view. After the flight, sit down for a proper Turkish breakfast: white cheese, olives, tomatoes and cucumbers, eggs with sucuk, menemen, honey with kaymak (clotted cream), jams and pekmez, a thick grape molasses that Cappadocia has made for centuries, with endless glasses of tea. If the balloons didn't fly, you'll watch them land from here instead.

A 15-minute walk from the village, the Göreme Open-Air Museum is a monastery complex cut into a ring of rock cones, with refectories, kitchens and more than a dozen churches. Monks lived here from the 4th century, when the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus, shaped the rules of Christian monastic life. Most of the painted churches date from the 10th to the 12th centuries, after the Byzantine church had ended its ban on religious images in 843.

Go into the Apple Church (Elmalı), the Snake Church (Yılanlı), where Saint George fights a very thin dragon, and the Sandal Church (Çarıklı). Then pay the extra for the Dark Church (Karanlık Kilise). It had so little light that its frescoes of the life of Christ, from the late 11th or early 12th century, kept their colors almost perfectly. On the way out, cross the road to the Buckle Church (Tokalı), included in your ticket and missed by half the visitors. It's the largest church in the area, painted in deep blue in the 10th century.

From the museum, walk 15 minutes up a quiet valley to El Nazar, the "Church of the Evil Eye" (nazar is the evil eye), a church carved into a single cone-shaped rock, with 10th-century frescoes of the life of Christ in reds and greens. It's on the way to nowhere, so you'll often have it to yourself, and it shows what the bigger churches of the Open-Air Museum must have felt like before the crowds.

After lunch in Göreme, take a minibus or walk 3 km north to Çavuşin, a village where people lived in the cliff until rockfalls in the 1950s and 60s moved them to new houses below. Climb up through the abandoned cave houses to the Church of St. John the Baptist near the top, one of the oldest churches in Cappadocia. (The famous painted church at the village entrance, the Church of Nikephoros Phokas, is closed for restoration.)

From Çavuşin, the trail into the Rose Valley (Güllüdere) is the best walk in Cappadocia: pink and cream rock, vineyards and apricot trees in the hollows, pigeon houses painted with white bands, and churches cut into the cliffs that you can walk into. Look for the Cross Church (Haçlı), with a carved cross on its ceiling, and the Grape Church (Üzümlü), named for the vines painted on its walls.

Time the end for the sunset viewpoint above the Red Valley (Kızılçukur), at the top of the trail, where the rock glows orange and red as the sun goes down. A small café there sells drinks, and taxis wait at the top for the ride back to Göreme.

Cappadocia's signature dish is the testi kebabı, "pot kebab": lamb or beef cooked slowly with vegetables in a sealed clay jug made from the red clay of Avanos, for two hours or more. At the table the waiter cracks the neck off the pot with a knife or a small hammer and pours out the stew. It's a bit of theater, and the meat is tender enough to eat with a spoon. It became a protected regional dish, Nevşehir testi kebabı, in 2021.

Dibek, in a centuries-old stone house in the middle of Göreme, is one of the long-running places where you order the pot in advance and eat sitting on cushions at low tables. Be wary of places that serve it instantly, or as part of a "Turkish night" package: a pot that's ready in five minutes was cooked long before you ordered it.

Uçhisar Castle isn't a castle in the usual sense but a huge rock pinnacle, the highest point around Göreme, honeycombed with rooms, tunnels and pigeon houses that were lived in until the 20th century. Climb the stairs to the top for the widest view in central Cappadocia: Göreme and the Rose Valley to the east, Pigeon Valley at your feet and, on a clear day, the snowy cone of Mount Erciyes far to the east, the volcano that made all of this.

From Uçhisar, walk back to Göreme through Pigeon Valley (Güvercinlik), about 4 km, mostly downhill. The cliffs are full of small holes, some painted white around the edges: they're pigeon houses, carved by villagers who collected the droppings to fertilize their vineyards and orchards in this poor volcanic soil. The trail follows the valley floor under poplars and fruit trees, and it's one of the easiest walks in the area.

Take a minibus or taxi north to Paşabağ, the Valley of the Monks, where the most famous fairy chimneys stand: tall pillars with two or three dark caps of harder rock, like giant mushrooms. A hermit's chapel dedicated to Saint Simeon, the saint who spent his life on top of a column, is cut into one of them.

The same ticket covers Zelve, a kilometer away, a whole village carved into three valleys and inhabited until 1952, when erosion made it too dangerous and the government moved its people to a new village nearby. You walk past cave houses, a mill, a rock-cut mosque and old churches. Parts of it are closed because of rockfall, but what's open is a good picture of how people lived in the rock until recently.

Avanos sits on the Kızılırmak, the Red River, the longest river in Turkey, named for the red clay it carries. Potters have used that clay for as long as anyone can remember (the tradition is said to go back to the Hittites), and the town is full of workshops where you can watch a master throw a pot on a kick wheel and try it yourself.

Have lunch at Bizim Ev, a restored stone house with a long menu of regional dishes, and walk across the swaying footbridge over the river.

Five kilometers southeast of Avanos stands Sarıhan, a Seljuk caravanserai built in 1249 for merchants traveling across Anatolia, with a carved stone gateway and a vaulted hall restored in 1991. In the evenings it hosts a sema, the ceremony of the Mevlevi order, the followers of the 13th-century poet Rumi. In white robes and tall felt hats, the dervishes turn slowly with one palm up to receive from God and one down to pass it on to the world, to the music of the reed flute (ney). UNESCO lists the ceremony as intangible heritage.

Under the town of Derinkuyu runs a city carved in tuff down to about 85 m below the surface, with stables, kitchens, wine presses, wells, a school on the second level and a church at the lowest level visitors can reach. A ventilation shaft 55 m deep, which doubled as a well, brought air to every floor, and huge round stones could be rolled across the passages to seal them from the inside. The story goes that it was rediscovered in 1963, when a man knocking down a wall in his basement found a tunnel behind it. It opened to visitors in 1965.

Nobody knows exactly when Derinkuyu was begun, possibly by the Phrygians in the 8th or 7th century BC, but it was greatly enlarged in Byzantine times, when Arab armies raided Cappadocia again and again between the 8th and 10th centuries, and local Christians were still sheltering in it in the 20th century. You see only about a tenth of it, and that's plenty. You'll hear that a tunnel 8 or 9 km long connects it to Kaymaklı, the next underground city. It's repeated everywhere and has never been proven.

Drive back north to Mustafapaşa, 5 km south of Ürgüp, which until 1924 was Sinasos, a prosperous Greek village. Its men made fortunes as caviar and fish traders in Istanbul and spent them back home on stone mansions with carved facades and painted ceilings. In 1923 the treaty that ended the war between Greece and Turkey ordered a population exchange based on religion: the Orthodox Christians of Sinasos, many of whom spoke Turkish, were sent to Greece, where they founded Nea Sinasos on the island of Euboea, and Muslims from Greece were settled in their houses.

Walk the lanes past the mansions to the Church of Saints Constantine and Helena in the main square, rebuilt in the 19th century, then stop for lunch.

Old Greek House (Eski Rum Evi) is in one of those 19th-century mansions, with frescoed walls around a courtyard, and it's been run by the same family for years, serving home-style Cappadocian food. It has a Bib Gourmand in the Michelin Guide. Order the mantı and the stuffed vegetables, and finish with aside, a local dessert of flour toasted in butter with grape molasses.

Ürgüp is Cappadocia's wine town. Vines have grown in this volcanic soil since antiquity, the Greek villages made wine until 1924, and the rock is full of old cellars that keep a steady cool temperature all year. Turasan, founded in 1943, is the big local name, with a tasting room and cellars in the rock in the middle of town. Ask for Emir, the native white grape of Cappadocia, crisp and citrusy. The reds are mostly made from grapes brought from other parts of Turkey, like Kalecik Karası from near Ankara and Öküzgözü from the east.

Walk up Temenni Hill, the "Hill of Wishes", in the middle of Ürgüp, past a small Seljuk tomb to the café terrace at the top, for the sunset over the town's old stone houses and the cliffs of Kayakapı, an old cave quarter that has been rebuilt as a hotel.

For a splurge, book Revithia in the Kayakapı quarter, the first restaurant in Cappadocia to earn a Michelin star, which turns local ingredients into a long tasting menu. For something simpler, eat at one of the restaurants around Ürgüp's main square. On the drive back to Göreme, stop at the Three Beauties (Üç Güzeller), three capped fairy chimneys on a ridge, lit up at night, that have become one of Cappadocia's most famous postcards. And remember that Tık Tık, a cooperative run by local women in the center of Ürgüp, makes some of the best mantı in the region, but only until 6pm.

The Ihlara Valley is a canyon 14 km long and up to 120 m deep that the Melendiz river has cut through the plateau, green with poplars and willows in the middle of a dry, open landscape. Monks lived in its walls for centuries, and dozens of churches are cut into the cliffs. Go down the long staircase from the main entrance (about 380 steps) and visit the churches nearby: the Church under the Tree (Ağaçaltı), with frescoes from the 9th to 11th centuries, the Snake Church (Yılanlı), with a Last Judgment where sinners are bitten by snakes, and the Fragrant Church (Kokar).

Then walk north along the river to Belisırma, about 4 km of easy, shady path with birdsong and the sound of water all the way.

In Belisırma, a cluster of simple restaurants have built wooden platforms right over the river, where you sit on cushions with your feet almost in the water. Order grilled fish or a güveç, meat and vegetables baked in a clay dish, and gözleme, a thin folded flatbread with cheese or potato cooked on a griddle by village women.

Above the village, look for the Church of St. George (Kırkdamaltı), painted in 1283-95, when this was already Seljuk Turkish land. Its frescoes include a Christian nobleman in Seljuk dress, a rare picture of Christians living under Muslim rule.

At the north end of the valley, Selime Monastery is carved high into the cliff above the village: a church, a kitchen with a soot-black chimney, stables and a huge hall with rock-cut columns, often called the largest rock-cut monastery in Cappadocia. Scramble up and through it for the view over the valley. You'll hear that scenes from Star Wars were filmed here. They weren't. The desert scenes were shot in Tunisia.

With a car, finish in Güzelyurt, 15 minutes east, an old hill town of honey-colored stone houses that was Gelveri, another Greek village emptied in 1924. Its big church, now a mosque, is dedicated to Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the Cappadocian Fathers, who local tradition says lived here, and the Monastery Valley below the town has more rock-cut churches. It's quiet, unhurried and very rarely crowded.

After a long day, keep dinner simple. Göreme's pide houses bake pide, boat-shaped flatbread with cheese, minced meat or egg, and lahmacun, a thin, crisp flatbread with spiced meat, in wood ovens, quickly and cheaply. Add a bowl of lentil soup and an ayran, the salty yogurt drink, and you'll sleep well.

Love Valley (Bağlıdere), just north of Göreme, is where the tallest and most, well, suggestive fairy chimneys stand, some of them 30 m or more, which is how it got its name. At dawn, balloons often drift low through the valley, and from the rim you look down at them and the pillars at the same time. Walk down into the valley afterwards: the trail runs among vineyards and the pillars, and you'll have it almost to yourself.

Ortahisar is the least touristy of the main villages, built around another giant rock castle, about 90 m high. The summit has been closed for years, but a terrace halfway up has a fine view over the village and the valleys. Below it, look for the deep cave warehouses cut into the rock: the constant cool temperature of the tuff makes them perfect for storing potatoes, apples and the lemons and oranges trucked up from the Mediterranean coast. Some are open to look into, and a few still smell of citrus.

In İbrahimpaşa, a sleepy village 3.5 km from Ortahisar, a family cooks a set menu of Cappadocian home cooking in their stone house, with vegetables and herbs from their own garden. Babayan Evi has a Bib Gourmand and a Michelin Green Star for sustainable cooking, and it's one of the best meals in the region. It takes bookings only, so call ahead.

You'll often read that "Cappadocia" means "land of beautiful horses" in Persian. It's a lovely story that linguists don't believe: the most likely origin is a Hittite phrase meaning "the low country". But horses have been bred here since antiquity, and a ride through the Rose, Red or Meskendir valleys at sunset is the best way to end the trip. Ranches in Göreme and Çavuşin take beginners on slow rides along the valley trails.

For the last night, book a table at Happena, a Bib Gourmand restaurant on a terrace above Göreme in the Kelebek hotel, whose menu draws on old Anatolian recipes, some going back to Hittite times. Order a bottle of Cappadocian Emir and a rakı to finish, and watch the lights come on over the fairy chimneys one last time. If you'd rather stay in Uçhisar, Saklı Konak there is another good choice.