Göreme
painted churches in the rock- Göreme / Cappadocia rock sites a full day
Valleys of fairy chimneys and rock-cut churches, many painted with Byzantine frescoes; the open-air museum gathers some of the finest.
🚗 Sleep in Göreme.
underground cities, painted churches
Cappadocia and the Konya plain
From the fairy chimneys of Göreme the road goes underground, then west across the plain to Konya and to Çatalhöyük, one of the oldest towns on earth.
3 daysnights: 2 Göreme~270 kmas the crow flies6 places4 World Heritage3provinces
Underground
two cities below the plain- Kaymaklı Underground City 1 hour
An underground city of narrow passages, storerooms and rolling stone doors, cut into the soft volcanic tuff, where villagers could shelter from raids with their animals.
- Derinkuyu Underground City 1 hour
The deepest of Cappadocia’s underground cities open to visitors, several storeys down through the rock, with air shafts, stables, kitchens, wells and a chapel.
- Aşıklı Höyük 1 hour
A village of mud-brick houses by the Melendiz river, lived in from around 8400 BC, where people were among the first anywhere to keep sheep and goats in pens.
🚗 about 21 km from the day before, 54 km between today’s places, as the crow flies. Sleep in Göreme.
Konya and Çatalhöyük
Rumi, and a town 9,000 years old- Iconium (Konya) a full day
Iconium of Saint Paul’s journeys, then the capital of the Seljuk sultans of Rum.
- Çatalhöyük 1–2 hours
One of the largest Neolithic towns known, lived in from about 7100 BC: houses packed wall to wall and entered through the roof, plastered and painted inside.
🚗 about 161 km from the day before, 37 km between today’s places, as the crow flies. End in Konya.
Distances are straight lines between places, so allow more on the road. Times on site are our estimates.