Explore Göreme

The Göreme Open-Air Museum is a group of churches, chapels and monastic refectories cut into the volcanic rock of a valley outside Göreme. Most date from the 10th to 12th centuries; the Elmalı, Barbara and Çarıklı churches keep painted scenes from the life of Christ, and the Dark Church, on a separate ticket, has frescoes whose colours survived because little light gets in.

Love Valley, known locally as Bağlıdere, is a valley north-west of Göreme lined with tall, slender pillars of pale tuff topped by harder caps, left standing as the softer rock around them eroded. A trail runs along the valley floor between Göreme and Uçhisar, and a viewpoint on the plateau above looks down on the pillars.

Uçhisar Castle is a tall outcrop of volcanic tuff at the top of Uçhisar village, the highest point in the Göreme area, hollowed out over centuries into rooms, cisterns, storerooms and tunnels used as a refuge. Steps and paths lead up through the rock to a summit terrace with views over Pigeon Valley, Göreme and Mount Erciyes.

Zelve is a former cave village spread over three valleys on the slopes of Aktepe, north of Göreme, where houses, churches, a mosque, a mill and dovecotes are cut into the rock. Erosion forced its last residents to move out in the 1950s, and the empty valleys were opened to visitors; one ticket also covers the fairy chimneys of nearby Paşabağ.

Paşabağ, also called Monks Valley, is a field of fairy chimneys near Çavuşin whose tall tuff columns carry several dark basalt caps each. Some were hollowed out as hermits' cells and chapels; one three-headed chimney holds a chapel dedicated to Saint Simeon the Stylite with a cell above it. It is part of the same ticketed site as Zelve.