Life Inside Cappadocia, the Biggest Cave City in the World

A fairyland on earth, in Turkey’s Cappadocian city modern lifestyle embraces the primitive life in caves.

Cappadocia has hundreds of hotels, houses, markets and cathedrals inside the caves. (Photo Parul Agrawal/The Quint)

Inhabited as early as 1200 BC, Cappadocia is one of the largest surviving cave cities in the world. For centuries, people here have lived in caves and tunnels.  Volcanic eruptions around Cappadocia created soft rocks, that were carved into caves. Caves helped war-ridden Anatolia to hide from enemies.  Centuries later, people still carve rocks to live inside them.

Cappadocia has hundreds of hotels, houses, markets and cathedrals inside the caves. The region has more than 35 underground cities,  where thousands of people lived as deep as seven stories under the earth. They had kitchens, rooms, dispensaries, vineries even animal shelters. The ventilation techniques of these structures are unique, which have long been studied by architects.

Post 2005, after a documentary was made and released on life inside Cappadocia, it became a popular tourist destination in Turkey. As tourists throng this fairyland, Cappadocians still buy caves and love to live in them.