There are so many fascinating things to see in Cappadocia that you could spend a lifetime here and still discover new places. The main 'must-see' attractions are the two large open-air museums and the best of the underground cities. There are also many small, all-but-forgotten rock-cut churches and monasteries, splendid hiking trails, several spectacular caravanserais and many dramatic rock formations well worth going out of your way to visit. 

Join Alt Esc to explore this iconic location!

We disembark the Star Legend in the AM to meet our transfer to the Istanbul airport. Depending on availability we will take a late afternoon or early evening flight from Istanbul to Kayseri or Nerival. Upon our arrival in Cappadocia, we will be met at the airport and transferred to our amazing home for the next three nights: Yunak Evleri.

We will have the rest of the day free to explore and have dinner on our own.

Optional Sunset Horseback Ride: details at end of itinerary.

Overnight: Yunak Evleri Cave Hotel 

Yunak Evleri Cave Hotel - Magical Serenity

 In Cappadocia’s magical landscape of fairy chimneys, in the ancient village of Urgup, is a unique cave hotel carved into a mountain cliff, the Yunak Evleri. This hotel includes 10 cave houses, total 120 rooms dating back to the 5th and 6th centuries and crowned with a 19th century Greek Mansion. Yunak Evleri is an inspiring hotel – an ideal base for exploring Cappadocia’s elaborate underground cities, hidden cavernous churches and enchanting rock terrain.

The name of the neighborhood "YUNAK" comes from the old days when women used to do all their washing and of course, socializing by the fountain located at the village square. Being by the fountain and at the Yunak was the center of daily life. A labyrinth of narrow passageways and curved stone stairways lead to unique rooms tastefully decorated in warm traditional style. 

These exceptional cave houses are renovated and decorated with care and in their own distinct style with strictly respecting the local character. The decor is elegant and personalized with beautiful hand-crafted furnishings and antiques. All rooms have private patios overlooking the Turkish Mesa. Yunak Evleri is small enough to be intimate, yet large enough to offer you privacy. 

  Evenings are characterized by sunset gatherings on soft upholstered Turkish pillows warmed by an outdoor fireplace. Candlelight dining is offered on the adjacent rooftop terrace. We serve local homemade foods for dinner and an open-buffet breakfast. Yunak Evleri opened its doors to its guests in 2000 and since then has hosted around 200,000 travellers from all regions of the world.

Listed in various prominent guidebooks’ top hotels lists, Yunak Evleri has created a peaceful balance between modern today and traditional past. With its convenient location in the center of Ürgüp, Yunak Evleri is a perfect base for daily excursions within Cappadocia.

Begin your day with a wonderful experience unique to Cappadocia! 

Get an early morning start as you transfer to the balloon site, where you will have the opportunity to watch the balloon being prepared for your flight. The flight will begin at sunrise. Your pilot will climb to a comfortable altitude of about 700 to 1000 meters above ground level. It is from this elevation that you will marvel at the beauty of Cappadocia below you. During certain segments of the flight, your pilot is capable of flying as low as 1 meter above the rock formations, which will allow you perfect photo-taking opportunities. At the end of the approximately 1-hour flight, enjoy a champagne celebration and receive a Flight Certificate, signed by your pilot, in commemoration of this magnificent experience. Drive back to the hotel for breakfast. (Price: $250.00 per person. This is not included in the package price, this is an optional add-on.)

After a delicious breakfast at our cave hotel, we will be picked up to begin exploring Cappadocia! We begin by visiting the Devrent Valley, which is also known as Imaginary Valley and Pink Valley. It does not have cave churches like the other valleys of Cappadocia. There are no Roman castles or Roman tombs in Devrent Valley, either. Actually it was never inhabited. So what makes it so famous? The lunar landscape!
Dervent Valley reveals many different rock formations and is only a 10 minute drive from Goreme. The small fairy chimneys in the valley form a lunar landscape, or moonscape gets their strange look. The valley also has many animal shaped rocks. It looks like a sculpture zoo made by nature. Some of the most important, or the easiest seen animal shapes are camel, snake, seals, and dolphin. If you let your imagination run free you will find many others. It is like looking at clouds and seeing a dragon. There is even a rock pillar which looks like Virgin Mary, holding Jesus Christ. 

Next we drive to Pasabag where highly remarkable earth pillars can be seen in the middle of a vineyard, which gave it it's name: the Pacha's vineyard. Pacha means "General", the military rank, in Turkish and it is a very common nick name. This site is also called Monks Valley. The name was derived from some cones carved in tuff stones which stand apart. Currently, there is a vineyard and a number of tuff cones standing right next to the road.

Some of these cones split into smaller cones in their upper sections, in which stylites and hermits once hid. The hermitage of Simeon monks was also here. A chapel dedicated to St. Simeon (Simon), and a hermit's shelter is built into one of the fairy chimneys with three heads. The entrance of the cell is decorated with antithetical crosses. Saint Simeon was living in seclusion near Aleppo in the 5th century, when rumors that he made miracles started to spread. Disturbed by all the attention, he began to live at the top of a 2m high column, and later moved to one 15m in height. From there he only descended occasionally to get food and drink brought by his disciples. The hermits of Cappadocia distanced themselves from the world by cutting into fairy chimneys rather than living on top of columns. They hollowed out the chimneys from bottom to top creating rooms at 10-15m high.
Pasabag valley contains some of the most striking fairy chimneys in Cappadocia with twin and even triple rock caps. This style is unique even for Cappadocia and these fairy chimneys are named mushroom-shaped fairy chimneys.
Drive to the city of Avanos where we will have  lunch on our own.

After lunch, we head to The Goreme Open-Air Museum which resembles a vast monastic complex composed of scores of refectory monasteries placed side-by-side, each with its own fantastic church. It is obviously the first sight to be visited by any traveler in Cappadocia, standing as it does in the very center of the region with easy access from all directions. It contains the finest of the rock-cut churches, with beautiful frescoes whose colors still retain all their original freshness. It also presents unique examples of rock hewn architecture and fresco technique. This has been a member of UNESCO World Heritage List since 1984, and was one of the first two UNESCO sites in Turkey.

The area covered by this Open Air Museum forms a coherent geographical entity and represents historical unity. There are eleven refectories within the Museum, with rock-cut churches tables and benches. Each is associated with a church. Most of the churches in Goreme Open Air Museum belong to the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries.
Lastly, before returning to your hotel, visit the natural castles at Uchisar. After the tour, you will be transferred to your hotel at around 4:30 pm.

Overnight: Yunak Evleri Cave Hotel  

After another delicious breakfast for at our hotel, we depart to visit Red valley, and explore the famous rock-cut churches and hike 5 km through the Güllüdere valley. Then visit Çavuşin village. This village is famous for the houses and churches of the Christian clergymen. 

After lunch drive to Pigeon Valley. In the afternoon visit Kaymaklı underground city. Where early Christians lived in fear and faith. After the tour, you will be transferred to your hotel at around 4:30 pm.

 Kaymakli underground city is built under the hill known as the Citadel of Kaymakli and was opened to visitors in 1964. The people of Kaymakli (Enegup in Greek) village have constructed their houses around nearly one hundred tunnels of the underground city. The inhabitants of the region still use the most convenient places in the tunnels as cellars, storage areas and stables, which they access through their courtyards. The Kaymakli Underground City has low, narrow and sloping passages. While the underground city consists of 8 floors below ground, only 4 of them are open to the public today, in which the spaces are organized around ventilation shafts.

The first floor of the underground city is the stable. The small size of this area suggests that there could be other stables in sections that have not yet been opened. The passage to the left of the stable contains a millstone door and leads right into the church. To the back of the corridor are rooms hollowed out as living areas.

The church on the 2nd floor has a single nave and two apses. In front of the apses is an altar, and on the sides are seating platforms. There are also some living areas on this floor.

The most important areas of the underground city are on the 3rd floor. Besides numerous storage places, wineries and kitchen, the block of andesite with relief-texture found on this floor is very interesting. Recent research has proved that this stone was used as a melting pot for copper. The stone was not brought here from outside but was part of the andesite layer unearthed while hollowing. To be able to use it as a melting pot, 57 holes were carved on the surface of the stone. The copper ore, about 10 cm in length, would be put into one of those holes and would be hammered using a hard piece of rock. This technique has been known since the Prehistoric Periods.
The copper brought to the Kaymakli Underground City was probably dug from a quarry between Aksaray and Nevsehir. (The same quarry was also used by the people of Asilikhoyuk, the oldest known settlement in Cappadocia Region.)

The fact that there are a lot of storage rooms and places to put earthenware jars in the wineries on the 4th floor indicates that the people living in this underground city were economically stable. The ventilation shaft can also be seen from the 4th floor. It is a vertical well and passes all floors down like on the elevator in an apartment. The depth of the ventilation shaft is about 80 meters in total.

Even though the whole city has not been completely opened, and since only 4 floors have been uncovered, it is certain that Kaymakli is one of the largest underground settlements in the region. It is accepted as the widest underground city of Cappadocia, among the explored ones. The number of the storage rooms in such a small area supports the idea that a great number of people resided here. Archeologists think that this could have been up to 3500 people. 

Overnight: Yunak Evleri Cave Hotel 

Depart from your hotel around 9:30 am for Derinkuyu Underground city to visit the huge refugee settlement carved by early Christians, where they could hide from persecutors. From Derinkuyu continue to the beautiful Valley of Ihlara, Formerly known as Peristerema. Explore the famous rock-cut churches and hike 4 km through the valley. On the way back visit the monasteries in Selime Village. 

 Underground Cities? These troglodyte cave-cities were excavated as early as Hittite times, and expanded over the centuries as various marauding armies traversed Central Anatolia in search of captives and plunder. There are 36 underground cities in Cappadocia and the deepest one is Derinkuyu underground city, while the widest is the .
The Derinkuyu underground city is located in the same named town Derinkuyu, which is situated 40km from Goreme (30 minute drive). There are about 600 outside doors to the city, hidden in the courtyards of surface dwellings. The underground city is approximately 85m deep. It contains all the usual rooms found in an underground city (stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories, churches, wineries etc.) Apart from these, a large room with a barrel vaulted ceiling on the second floor was a missionary school, the rooms to the left being study rooms.

From the 3rd and 4th floors onwards the descent is by way of vertical staircases which lead to a cruciform plan church on the lowest floor.
The 55m deep ventilation shaft was also used as a well. Not every floor was provided with water wells up to the surface in order to protect the dwellers from poisoning during raids. Derinkuyu contains at least 15,000 ventilation ducts that provide fresh air deep within the underground city. The Derinkuyu Underground City was opened to visitors in 1965 but so far less than half of it can be visited.

It is unlikely that the underground cities were ever intended for permanent dwelling, or even long stays, but they were clearly built to withstand attack and could support large numbers of people and their domestic animals, for extended periods of time. The urban organization was very complex, and there was probably always work in progress.
The extensive networks of passages, tunnels, stepped pits and inclined corridors link family rooms and communal spaces where people would meet, work and worship. The cities were complete with wells, chimneys for air circulation, niches for oil lamps, stores, water tanks, stables and areas where the dead could be placed until such time as conditions on the surface would allow their proper disposal. Most importantly, carefully balanced moving stone doors, resembling mill stones, were devised to quickly block the corridors in the event of an attack. Of course, these doors operated from one side only! 

Ihlara Valley is located near 2 of the 3 volcanoes of Cappadocia (Mount Hasan and Mount Melendiz) is a canyon with a depth of approximately 100m and was formed by the Melendiz River thousands of years ago. It begins at Ihlara village and ends with Selime Monastery at Selime village after making 26 bends along 14 kilometers.

It is believed that the valley housed more than 4,000 dwellings and 100 cave churches decorated with frescoes. Around 80,000 people once lived in Ihlara Valley.
There are 4 entrances to Ihlara valley. The first one is at the start of the valley in Ihlara Village. The second one opens to the 4th kilometer of the valley and it is the most popular entrance, and has more than 300 steps down to the valley. The third entrance is Belisirma village which allows you to enter the valley by driving. It is located in the middle (7th km) of the valley. 

The last entrance is the end of the valley at the Selime Monastery. It is very pleasant to walk through the Ihlara valley by the vineyards, poplars and pistachio trees to the soothing sound of the rushing water (Melendiz River), and surrounded by a rich wildlife of lizards, frogs, butterflies, birds and sometimes eagles and other mammals like lambs and sheep.

There many cave churches in Ihlara Valley. Most of them display scenes dissimilar to the scenes depicted in other Cappadocian churches. In fact, they are reminiscent of the early churches of Syria and the Coptic churches of Egypt. The texts in Ihlara churches are unusually long.

Some of the most important churches in the Ihlara Valley are:

Kokar Kilise (The Smelly Church)
The Kokar Kilise (The Smelly Church) is located in the first quarter of the valley between Ihlara Village and main entrance. It can be entered through a ruined apse. The original entrance has been blocked by a landslide. There are many frescoes covering the walls of Kokar Kilise. On the left side, you can see the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Proof of the Virgin, the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi scenes. On the right, you will see the Last Supper, the Betrayal, Jesus being Led Away, Jesus before Annas and Caiaphos, the Crucifixion and the Entombment. On the door facing the entrance there is a Deesis above, with scenes of the Flight to Egypt and The Last Supper below was badly damaged when openings were made at a much later date for windows and a door leading into the burial chamber. On the ceiling you can see the Ascension and the Pentecost together with a large Greek cross with the hand of God giving benediction in the center. On each side of the lower parts of the vaulting there are frescoes depicting the apostles standing and seated.

Purenli Seki Kilisesi (Church with the Terrace)
Purenli Seki Kilisesi is also located in the first quarter of the valley, around 100m from Kokar Kilise. You have to climb about 25m above the level of the river. It is composed of an entrance, a burial chamber and a double naos, separated by pillared arcades, each having an apse. The church is covered by frescoes classified as "archaic" but characterized by exquisite details, a strong sense of design and amazing freedom of expression.
Agacalti Kilise (Church under the Tree)
When you turn right at the bottom of the stairs from the main entrance, you will find yourself 10m from the church. Prepare yourself for a surprise when you enter the church through the ruined arch for a totally different style of architecture. This church is quite different from the other churches of the Byzantine world of the 10th and 11th century Cappadocia, with its harmoniously contrasted colors of red, green and yellow, the subjects of its paintings and its decoration of flowers, rosettes and checkerboard patterns, all betraying strong eastern influence. The Church, also known as the Church of Daniel or the Church of Pantassa, has a free cross architectural plan.

On the wall opposite the entrance there is a fresco of Daniel in the Lion's Den. The left cross-arm contains the Annuciation, the Visitation, the Nativity and the Magi. The right cross-arm contains the Flight into Egypt, the Baptism and the Dormition. The Dormition of the Virgin (Koimesis) is unique as far as Cappadocia is concerned. It is composed of two scenes. In the first scene, Mary is lying on a bed, with Christ accompanied by St. John sitting on one side of the bed to recover her soul. In the upper scene Christ is shown holding his Mother's soul, with an Angel behind him.

At the end of the tour you will be transferred to airport for your evening flight (approx. 1 1/2  hours) to Istanbul to meet up with our international flights home.

Sunset Horseback Riding Tour in Cappadocia

Horseback Riding Tour or, in other words, the Horse Safari Tour in “Cappadocia,” whose name means "Land of Beautiful Horses" in the Persian language, is perhaps the most appropriate activity reminiscent of the name of Cappadocia. While running through the valleys ornamented with fairy chimneys like embroidery, leaving dust clouds behind and horseshoe marks on the ground, breathing in the freedom of the moment in a geography dating back to ancient times. One of the best ways to blend in with the enchanted essence of the region while exploring Cappadocia, which is on the UNESCO World Heritage List, is to ride on the back of these beautiful horses. Horseback Riding Tour is one of the most enjoyable activities in the region.

The charm of Horseback Riding Tour in Cappadocia

The activity that has had the greatest impact on the tourism activity that started in Cappadocia after the 1980s is Horseback Riding Tour. You do not need to be experienced in horseback riding in order to participate in Horseback Riding Tour in Cappadocia, which is one of the most popular activities of both foreign and domestic tourists. Even if it is your first ride, you can get ready to go exploring after a small briefing at horse farms that provide professional service and where security measures will be provided and monitored constantly. 

The horse farm where you will take a tour, that is, the equestrian center, is the beginning of Horseback Riding Tour. You start by choosing your horse first. You get companions according to which Anatolian, English or Arabian horses you are close to and their docility and friendliness references. Since the horses are trained and experienced for these rides, they do not make sudden movements or cause difficulties. You can sometimes feel yourself in a western movie and sometimes in a history documentary in the valleys on the route, accompanied by a tour guide called "Native Cowboy.” 

The narrow paths that vehicles cannot enter, the skirts of fairy chimneys and the villages with lush green vineyards turn into a movie plateau while on Horseback Riding Tour. It doesn't matter whether it's summer or winter, you can ride a horse in Cappadocia in all seasons.

Incredible places to see Horseback Riding Tour in Cappadocia

Since the valleys of Cappadocia are very suitable tracks to visit by horse, Horseback Riding Tours in Cappadocia definitely includes the most beautiful examples of them on the route. Kılıçlar Valley, Love Valley, Meskendir Valley, Red Valley, Pidgeon Valley, Paşabağı, Çavuşin Village are among the routes of Cappadocia where you will be satisfied with both natural beauties and fairy chimneys..

Who can join Horseback Riding Tour in Cappadocia?

• Above 12+ years old

• Those who do not have any serious health problems 

• Compatible with group activities

• Those who know how to enjoy the life

• Those who have no shortage of time

• Calm ones on a horse without panic

• Anyone who will not risk their health without turning their excitement into stress can join this tour.

• You don't need any special skills. You just have to really enjoy living and enjoy the moment to the full.

• Unfortunately, guests over 95 kg (209 pounds) cannot participate in Horseback Riding Tour in Cappadocia. 

Options in WeTravel Registration:

Sunset Horseback Riding 1-hour hour USD $100 per person