Cappadocia 3-day Itinerary

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

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.

One of the world’s great hot-air balloon flights, over a moonscape-esque landscape of arches, caverns, striking spires and eye-popping, giant protuberances resembling gigantic mushrooms.

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.

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.

The famed dance of the Whirling Dervishes, performed in the atmospheric surroundings of an atmospheric 13th-century caravansaray.

Keslik, the Monastery of the Archangels, was hollowed out in the 10th Century, and a selection of rock-hewn dwellings – chapels, refectories, wineries – are still visible today, set among well-tended orchards. There’s a friendly caretaker offering interesting historical explanations and complimentary tea. Signposted off the main road 15 km south of Urgup.

This extraordinary, 85m deep, multi-level underground city, carved into the soft bedrock, is the largest underground city in Turkey. A visit entails a descent via long lamp-lit tunnels, through chambers and store rooms, into the heart of an apparently endless warren that once sheltered over 20,000 people.

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