Cappadocia

Cappadocia is the product of two volcanoes and several million years of erosion. Ash settled into soft tuff, harder basalt capped it in places, and wind and water did the rest — leaving the cones, ridges and chimneys that make the landscape unmistakable.

People have been carving into that soft rock for millennia. Byzantine communities cut hundreds of churches into the cliffs, and the frescoed chapels of the Göreme Open Air Museum, inscribed by UNESCO, preserve some of the finest tenth and eleventh-century wall painting in Anatolia.

They also dug downwards. Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı descend through many levels, with ventilation shafts, wells, stables and rolling stone doors, built as refuges large enough to shelter thousands of people and their livestock for months at a time.