Kaymaklı Underground City is contained within the citadel of Kaymaklı in the Cappadocia Turkey. First opened to tourists in 1964, the village is about 19 km from Nevşehir, on the Nevşehir-Niğde road. The ancient name was Enegup. The houses in the village are constructed around the nearly one hundred tunnels of the underground city. The tunnels are still used today as storage areas, stables, and cellars. The underground city at Kaymaklı differs from Derinkuyu Underground City in terms of its structure and layout. The tunnels are lower, narrower, and more steeply inclined. Of the four floors open to tourists, each space is organized around ventilation shafts. This makes the design of each room or open space dependent on the availability of ventilation.
A stable is located on the first floor. The small size of the stable could indicate that other stables exist in the sections not yet opened. To the left of the stable is a passage with a millstone door. The door leads into a church. To the right of the stables are rooms, possibly living spaces.
Located on the second floor is a church with a nave and two apses. Located in front of the apses is a baptismal font, and on the sides along the walls are seating platforms. Names of people contained in graves here coincide with those located next to the church, which supports the idea that these graves belonged to religious people. The church level also contains some living spaces.
The third floor contains the most important areas of the underground compound: storage places, wine or oil presses, and kitchens. The level also contains a remarkable block of andesite with relief textures. Recently it was shown that this stone was used as a pot to melt copper. The stone was hewn from an andesite layer within the complex. In order for it to be used in metallurgy, fifty-seven holes were carved into the stone. The technique was to put copper ore into each of the holes (about 10 centimetres (3.9 in) in diameter) and then to hammer the ore into place. The copper was probably mined between Aksaray and Nevsehir. This mine was also used by Asilikhoyuk, the oldest settlement within the Cappadocia Region.
The high number of storage rooms and areas for earthenware jars on the fourth floor indicates some economic stability. Kaymaklı is one of the largest underground settlements in Cappadocia the region. The large area reserved for storage in such a limited area appears to indicate the need to support a large population underground. Currently only a fraction of the complex is open to the public.
Kaymaklı underground city ( Turkish: Kaymakli yeraltı şehri ). Admission TL15; 8am-5pm, last admission 4.30pm) features a maze of tunnels and rooms carved eight levels deep into the earth (only four are open). As this is the most convenient and popular of the underground cities, you should get here early in July and August to beat the tour groups, or from about 12.30pm to 1.30 pm when they break for lunch.
Kaymakli Underground City, Cappadocia,
Cappadocia has 36 underground citties But the most important and the best is KAYMAKLI. You can see everything in this one.Stone doors , stable, graves, food storages, living room , church, kitchen , ventilation shaft, winery, tunnels…
if you like to see everything, you have to choose this one to visit.
These undergound caverns are carved into the rock face and were an important refuge for the local people when invaders came through. The tunnels go up and down 4 levels and there are numerous nooks and crannies to explore. Some of the tunnels are very tight and long so do not do this if you are claustrophobic or cannot bend…
Interesting experience and worth the time. The usual 3TL parking. Just a few kilometers up the road the busier Derinkuyu underground city and not quite as extensive, but the same experience. Not for the claustrophobic. It involves hunkered-over walking through tight spaces.
This is probably pretty close to what it may have looked like!
It is a very interesting experience because hearing the stories about how people used to live in these centuries old underground dwellings, with stables, churches, living quarters, and then experiencing navigating the accessible floors through narrow sloping tunnels that require some degree of flexibility, and just imagining how…
I could not believe in that people lived in that city for months in the old. they had tought everything without any technology but perfect. but this one is smaller than Derinkuyu underground city but this city has everything same with the other one, and I Recommend everyone.
Our tour group visited Kaymakli. I went into just the first few rooms to get a sense of it. I decided not to do the full descent as it was more of the same. I was focused on getting enough shopping time at the stalls set up outside. The shopping was great, I got all of the souvenirs I wanted,…
Looks like an ancient bomb site when you approach it, a real dump until you walk through the market stalls on the approaches to the turnstile entrance. Then you have to walk through some seriously narrow and low tunnels sniffing the backside of the person in front before you emerge into bare living quarters. Some of the more claustrophobic headed…
I Loved.. Kaymakli Underground City is Amazing…
Eight floors of underground habitation of which four are open to the public leaves one in awe. An entire city that was carved out of the rock, was able to house more people than we can imagine. One goes up, one goes down, one crouches through tunnels and enters rooms with high ceilings.
It is a very exciting place to see. Very narrow passages, drifts and ventilation shafts. It is told that 400 hundred families lived there in hand excavated caves. A very charming church inside..