Cappadocia's fairy chimneys were carved by erosion from ancient volcanic ash
Central Turkey's Cappadocia looks like another planet: cones and spires of soft rock, some hollowed into churches, castles and underground cities. The landscape began with huge eruptions from Mount Erciyes and its neighbours. Wind and water then spent millions of years sculpting the ash deposits, leaving harder layers standing tall.
Cappadocia sits on a high plateau more than 1,000 metres above sea level, punctured by volcanic peaks, the tallest being Mount Erciyes near Kayseri at 3,916 metres. The climate is continental and semi-arid, with hot, dry summers and cold, snowy winters. Outcrops such as Uçhisar and Ortahisar are made of tougher volcanic rock that resisted erosion, so they were later cut into rock castles and dwellings. In 2022 the International Union of Geological Sciences named its Miocene ignimbrite sequence one of 100 geological heritage sites worldwide.
The name first appears in the late sixth century BC in inscriptions of the Persian kings Darius the Great and Xerxes I, as Katpatuka. One theory derives it from a Hittite phrase meaning place below. An older suggestion, land of good horses, is hard to square with the ancient spelling. In the late Bronze Age the area was Hatti, the heartland of the Hittite empire.
After Alexander the Great destroyed Persian power, a former satrap named Ariarathes crowned himself king and pushed his borders to the Black Sea, though the regent Perdiccas later had him crucified; his adopted son recovered the realm. Persian settlers kept Zoroastrian fire temples burning, and the geographer Strabo thought Cappadocia almost a living part of Persia, with fire worship recorded as late as 465. Its kings eventually sided with Rome, and in AD 17 the emperor Tiberius summoned the last king, Archelaus, and made Cappadocia a Roman province. By 314 it was the largest province in the empire.
Christianity was firmly rooted by the third century. The Cappadocian Fathers of the 4th century shaped early Christian thought, and Macrina, from the region, was an early champion of women's monasticism. Hundreds of churches and monasteries survive at sites such as Göreme and Ihlara, alongside underground cities dug for refuge during persecution, which now draw visitors from around the world.
Source: Cappadocia
