19 Best things to see & do in Cappadocia

Discover Cappadocia’s excellent wines and learn about its centuries-old history of wine-making with a visit to its wineries and wine shops.

Surely one of the greatest places on earth to horse ride – in these unique, jaw-dropping landscapes of fairy-tale-like rock formations, ancient caves, and scenic valleys.

An extensive network of biking tracks, passing through striking and unique landscapes and moonscapes, makes Cappadocia a destination for exceptional mountain biking.

The region is famous for its sunsets, most famously over the Red and adjacent Rose Valley, so-called for the pinkish tones the soft tufa stone acquires at sunset. Watch the show from the Goreme National Park’s Panorama Viewpoint, lined with simple cafes.

A beautiful and undemanding 6km valley trail, with rock churches and formations galore, that offers walkers a grand glimpse of the surreal Cappadocian back country.

This 2km walk (from the ticket office) leads you through this beautiful Cappadocian valley, inhabited until the middle of the 20th-century, taking in churches, stables, and monks’ refectories.

A remarkable natural amphitheatre of rock-hewn, fresco-filled churches and monastic dwellings dating back to Byzantine times. Cappadocia’s most visited site.

An Aladdin’s cave of a carpet shop, a warren of rooms packed with flat-weave kilims both from the region and Turkey’s other renowned carpet regions, piled, hung and draped in picturesque profusion.

Arguably the world’s greatest hot-air balloon flight, over Cappadocia‘s spellbinding moonscape-esque landscape of arches, honeycombed hills, striking spires and eye-popping, giant protuberances resembling gigantic mushrooms.

This recently-restored hammam occupies a fine old building and is family-run, for unisex visitors, with professional, only-male attendants. (Women-only times available with female attendants). The best place in the region for the quintessential Turkish Bath experience.