Göreme National Park and Rock Sites of Cappadocia

GÖREME NATIONAL PARK AND ROCK SITES OF CAPPADOCIA Central Anatolia, Turkey · Pleistocene to present · Multi-period AT-RISK

SITE AT A GLANCE Location: Nevşehir Province, Central Anatolia, Turkey Country: Turkey Region: West Asia / Eastern Mediterranean Coordinates: 38.6431° N, 34.8297° E Type: Natural and Built Heritage Sub-types: Geological Landscape, Byzantine Cave Churches, Underground Cities, Archaeological Sites Period: Human occupation from approximately 7500 BCE; cave churches from 4th century CE; peak Byzantine 9th–11th century CE Risk Level: At-Risk Risks: Balloon vibration, Tourist footfall, Humidity damage to frescoes, Illegal excavation, Groundwater depletion, Climate change UNESCO Status: Inscribed 1985

3D DOCUMENTATION A photogrammetric model of fairy chimneys in the Cappadocia landscape (produced by enmei, free access) is available on Sketchfab. The Documenting Cappadocia project (Sketchfab username byzcapp) has produced a collection of Byzantine cave church 3D models available on the platform. Dumbarton Oaks publishes Byzantine Cappadocia research in open access at doaks.org. CyArk's Open Heritage programme has documented Turkish heritage sites including Cappadocian monuments. The UNESCO World Heritage dossier for Göreme National Park provides the authoritative site documentation. Sketchfab — Fairy Chimneys Cappadocia (enmei, free): https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/fairy-chimneys-in-cappadocia-turkey-5691997304d8464e919b9ac6318a9753 Documenting Cappadocia — Byzantine cave churches (byzcapp): https://sketchfab.com/byzcapp Dumbarton Oaks Byzantine research: https://www.doaks.org/research/byzantine UNESCO dossier: https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/357

SITE DESCRIPTION The fairy chimneys of Cappadocia were made by three volcanoes — Erciyes, Hasan, and Güllüdağ — erupting over approximately ten million years, blanketing the region in ignimbrite (volcanic tuff). Rain and wind eroded the softer tuff while leaving harder basalt caps on some formations, producing the iconic shape: a pale tuff column topped by a dark basalt hat, standing in valleys whose colours shift through cream, ochre, rose, and grey across a single hillside. The fairy chimneys continue to erode and collapse. Some photographed fifty years ago no longer exist. Into this landscape, beginning in the 4th century CE, Christian communities carved an entire civilisation from the living rock. The Göreme valley alone contains dozens of cave churches, their interiors covered with frescoes from the 9th through 13th centuries. The Dark Church (Karanlık Kilise) maintained conditions so dim that its frescoes survived with their original colours essentially intact — Nativity, Last Supper, Crucifixion scenes in pigments that Byzantine churches elsewhere lost to iconoclasm and warfare. The Tokali Church, the largest rock-cut church in Göreme, contains the most extensive fresco cycles in Cappadocia, spanning multiple artistic phases across two adjacent spaces. Beneath the surface, at least 36 underground cities were carved from the tuff. Derinkuyu descends 18 storeys and approximately 60 metres, with an estimated capacity of 20,000 people with their livestock and food stores. Rolling stone doors sealed from inside. Ventilation shafts maintained air quality at depth. These were not emergency shelters but sustained communities capable of existing underground for months.

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE The cave churches of Cappadocia preserve Byzantine fresco cycles that elsewhere survived only in fragments or not at all. The protective qualities of the tuff — stable temperature, low light, physical isolation from the iconoclast campaigns that stripped Byzantine churches across the empire — created an accidental conservation environment of extraordinary effectiveness. The frescoes that resulted are the most complete surviving record of Middle Byzantine pictorial art. The underground cities are the other extraordinary achievement: a parallel Cappadocia built entirely below the visible one, used during the Arab raids of the 7th through 10th centuries CE as refuges in which entire communities could shelter while raiders swept through the landscape above. The ventilation systems are sophisticated enough that large populations could shelter for extended periods. The stone doors, which could only be opened from inside, made the underground cities effectively impenetrable once sealed. The landscape itself is a geological record of Anatolian volcanic history spanning millions of years, and the ecology of the fairy chimney formations is distinct from any other landscape on earth.

THE STORY OF THE SITE

c. 7500 BCE: Neolithic Settlement Neolithic communities settle in Cappadocia, exploiting the easily workable tuff for shelters and storage. The landscape's capacity for habitation — its softness, its stability, its natural insulation — has been exploited for at least 9,500 years and probably longer.

4th Century CE: The Christian Communities Christian communities fleeing Roman persecution, and later establishing monastic settlements, begin carving churches and dwellings into the Cappadocian tuff. The isolation of the landscape, its natural defensibility, and its proximity to the Byzantine heartland make it an ideal location for communities that need to be accessible to their faith's centre but protected from its persecutors.

7th to 10th Century CE: The Arab Raids and the Underground Cities Arab raids across Anatolia drive Cappadocian populations underground. The underground cities of Derinkuyu and Kaymakli, which had existed in simpler forms since earlier periods, are enlarged and systematically developed as permanent refuge infrastructure capable of housing entire communities for months at a time. The raids that made the underground cities necessary are also the context in which the cave churches receive their most elaborate decorative programmes, as the communities that shelter underground and worship in rock-cut churches develop a cultural life of remarkable intensity.

9th to 11th Century CE: The Byzantine Artistic Peak Cappadocia's rock-cut churches receive their most ambitious fresco programmes during the Middle Byzantine period. The Dark Church, the Tokali Church, and the churches of the Ihlara Valley represent the highest achievements of this tradition, preserved in conditions that nowhere else in the Byzantine world has matched.

1071: The Seljuk Conquest The Seljuk Turks defeat the Byzantine army at the Battle of Manzikert, beginning the transformation of Anatolia from a Christian to a Muslim majority region. Byzantine religious use of the cave churches gradually declines over the following centuries, though the structures continue to be used for storage, shelter, and other purposes.

1985 to Present: Recognition and Tourism Pressure UNESCO inscription in 1985. Hot air balloon tourism begins to develop in the 1990s and expands dramatically in the 2000s and 2010s, driven by social media and the availability of the landscape as a photographic backdrop. By the 2010s, up to 200 balloons fly over the Göreme valley on a typical morning. Fresco conservation becomes increasingly urgent. Visitor limits are introduced for individual cave churches with inconsistent enforcement.

THREATS AND RISK ASSESSMENT The Hot Air Balloon Problem On a typical morning, 100 to 200 hot air balloons float above the Göreme valley. The thermal output from their burners and the vibration from their low-altitude passes creates mechanical stress on cave church interiors whose tuff backing has been weakened by centuries of humidity fluctuation. The tourism is economically significant and has made Cappadocia globally recognisable. It also creates conditions that accelerate the deterioration of the things people come to see.

Fresco Deterioration Visitor breath and body heat raise temperature and humidity within enclosed cave church interiors. Salt crystallisation in the tuff backing detaches the plaster and pigment layer. Some cave churches receive hundreds of visitors daily in peak season — spaces designed for dozens of worshippers. Graffiti cut into soft tuff walls causes surface damage at a rate that visitor monitoring cannot keep pace with.

Illegal Development Fairy chimneys and cave formations that lie outside the strictly protected Göreme Open-Air Museum area are subject to illegal excavation and conversion to boutique hotels and cave accommodation. The Turkish regulatory framework for protecting these formations has proven difficult to enforce across the dispersed landscape of the Cappadocian region.

RESEARCH AND SCHOLARLY CONTEXT The Documenting Cappadocia project's collection of Byzantine cave church 3D models on Sketchfab provides accessible documentation of the fresco interiors that is invaluable for both research and education. Dumbarton Oaks, the Byzantine studies research centre of Harvard University, publishes work on Cappadocian Byzantine art and architecture in open access. The enmei fairy chimney photogrammetry on Sketchfab provides a geometric baseline for monitoring landscape change. CyArk's Open Heritage work extends the documentation to additional monuments across the site.

IF NOTHING CHANGES The frescoes of the Göreme cave churches are losing themselves to humidity, visitor breath, and the physical vibration of tourist infrastructure operating above them. This is a slow process measured in years and decades, not days, but it moves in one direction only. The Dark Church's colours, which survived the iconoclast campaigns of the Byzantine Empire and eight centuries of obscurity, may not survive the particular pressures of popular tourism. The underground cities, less visited and less photographed, face different threats from groundwater depletion and the subsidence that follows. The fairy chimneys erode whether tourists come or not, because they are made of rock that erosion made and erosion continues to unmake. The question is how much of the human inheritance layered onto this natural landscape can be protected while the tourism economy that funds its protection simultaneously accelerates its destruction.