The wonders of Cappadocia – fairy chimneys everywhere

In the centre of Turkey in an area called Cappadocia there’s an amazing landscape of fairy chimneys, underground cities and houses and churches built into caves.
It’s easy to visit and it’s also possible to sleep in hotels built into the rocky towers which are everywhere and make up large parts of the villages in the area.



Several million years ago there was a big volcano in the area which one day suddenly exploded, sending billions of tonnes of ash and millions of hard rocks shooting up into the air. All this stuff eventually landed and created a flat landscape of ash littered with smaller hard rocks. Eventually the ash hardened to make a rock called Tufa.

Ever since then the rain and the wind have been washing away the tufa wherever there aren’t any hard rocks sitting on the top protecting it, leaving tall towers. 

People from the outside called the towers ‘Fairy Chimneys’ because they thought that fairies lived in them.

 For hundreds of years people have lived inside the towers, carving rooms and tunnels that go right to the very top. They had rooms where pigeons lived in little holes in the walls and the people collected the pigeon poo to use as fertiliser on their gardens, where they grew grapes and fruit.


About 1000 years ago all the Christians in the area were threatened by Muslim invaders and they even built underground cities that they hid in while the armies marched over the top looking for them. Instead of having normal churches they built their churches into the cliffs or underground where no-one could find them and destroy them.
Here’s some more pictures of some of the fairy chimneys and the valleys in the area, the best bit about it is that you can just explore and climb around inside the chimneys looking for tunnels and undiscovered rooms: