07 Dec 2025
The Cappadocia region
The Cappadocia region is the place where nature and history merge most beautifully in the world. While geographical events shaped the fairy chimneys, throughout history, people carved houses and churches into these fairy chimneys and decorated them with frescoes, carrying the traces of millennia-old civilizations to the present day. During the reign of Roman Emperor Augustus, Strabo, an ancient writer, in his 17-book book "Geography" (Anatolia XII, XIII, XIV), describes the borders of the Cappadocia Region as a vast region extending from the Taurus Mountains in the south, Aksaray in the west, Malatya in the east, and the Eastern Black Sea coast in the north. Today's Cappadocia Region encompasses the provinces of Nevşehir, Aksaray, Niğde, Kayseri, and Kırşehir. The narrower, rocky Cappadocia Region encompasses Uçhisar, Ürgüp, Avanos, Göreme, Derinkuyu, Kaymaklı, Ihlara, and their surrounding areas. Traditional Cappadocian houses and dovecotes carved into the rocks express the region's unique character. These houses were built into the hillsides in the 19th century from either rock or cut stone. Stone, the region's only architectural material, is soft after being quarried due to the region's volcanic structure, making it very easy to work with. However, it hardens upon exposure to air, becoming a very durable building material. Due to the abundance of available materials and their ease of workability, the stonemasonry unique to the region developed and became an architectural tradition. Both courtyard and house doors are made of wood. The upper parts of the arched doors are adorned with stylized ivy or rosette motifs. The dovecotes in the region are small structures built in the late 19th and 18th centuries. Some of the dovecotes, important for demonstrating Islamic painting, were built as monasteries or churches. The surfaces of the dovecotes are richly decorated with ornamentation and inscriptions by local artists.