In 1963, a man in the Nevşehir province of Turkey was doing a little home remodeling. He decided to knock down a wall of his home for an expansion. He discovered a hidden room on the wall with a slender hallway carved out of the stone below his home. The hallway led to a cave-like room, which led to more hallways and cave-like rooms. Before he knew it, he had stumbled onto an entire underground city attached to his home. The city was completely empty and abandoned, yet it had every amenity needed to sustain a society.
What he had stumbled upon by accident was Derinkuyu, the underground city of Cappadocia. These tunnels are believed to be hand-dug and date back to the 12th and 15th centuries BCE. They sheltered people and their food from extreme climates and served as protection from enemy attacks.
The ground primarily consists of ash and volcanic material, making it easy to excavate yet very durable. No one is sure who first occupied the underground city, but it’s certain that many groups have occupied it over the centuries. With up to 11 accessible floors to the public, the city reaches depths of over 280 feet below the surface. There have been 11 floors excavated and deemed safe for tourism. However, it’s speculated that over 18 floors below have yet to be discovered.
The miles of tunnels are blackened from centuries of torches, yet they connect to other cities in the area, spanning miles and able to sustain tens of thousands of people at one time. The underground tunnels led to giant rooms that housed schools, wine cellars, oil press rooms, churches, gathering halls, shops, tombs, arsenals, livestock corrals, escape routes, and water wells separated from the surface water.
There are over 100 entrances to the underground cities, each hidden behind bushes, walls, courtyards, or hidden entrances large enough to move livestock. The entrances and important rooms were guarded with giant stone doors, hand-carved and weighing up to a thousand pounds. Underground river systems were used as drinking sources to avoid poisoning by surface water, susceptible to enemies above-ground.
About 10 percent of the underground city is currently open to the public, but since its discovery in 1963, experts still have a lot to excavate and document. The well shafts were built to prevent any poisoning from enemies on the surface, and vertical staircases lead to floors below, though they can be very dangerous.
The tunnels were dug very narrow, forcing people to walk through them single-file, providing an advantage over enemies. Each room, like the wine cellar and cold food storage, showcases incredible detail and time spent in their construction. The fact that this incredible underground society remained hidden for thousands of years until revealed in 1963 is truly astonishing and speaks to the ingenuity of its builders.
