We began our day with a one hour drive from Kayseri to the Cappadocia region. Our first stop was Goreme which is filled with unusual rock structures that were carved by man (and nature) out of volcanic rocks. The ancient volcanic erruptions left soft and hard stone mixed. As the weather wore away the soft stone, these tall cones of stone were left. The area became a monastic community that include a school. We only saw a small number of these dwellings and chapels, but there are hundreds scattered throughout the region and people still live in some of them today.
These include churches also carved into the rock and dating to the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries. It is a UNESCO World heritage site.
You can see the scratched markings on the wall where chisels were used to carve away the stone.
This room was used for cooking, you can see the soot markings on the wall and the angle where the smoke blew up and out the window.
Some of the buildings were living spaces, others were chapels for study and worship. One of the most spectacular was the Dark Church which had beautiful paintings on the walls. One member of our group is a religious historian and can read some Greek. She was identifying all of the different scenes in the life of Christ as they were depicted on the walls and reading the names of the Saints that were on the walls. Really fascinating.
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