{"it":{"id":"LEV-KAY","kind":"site","sub":"Asia","name":"Kaymakli underground city","place":"Turkey","lat":38.466,"lon":34.751,"date":"Phrygian-Byzantine (INTERPRETATION)","mat":"volcanic tuff (rock-cut)","nfacts":5,"tags":["Asia"],"sum":"Beneath Kaymaklı in Cappadocia, Türkiye, an underground city runs down at least eight levels carved into soft volcanic rock, with rooms for people, animals, food and wine.","why":"An underground city of four floors cut into soft rock in Cappadocia, one of 150 to 200 in the region.","src":[428],"nsrc":4,"yt":"Imagine hearing raiders overhead while you hide underground. What would you need to survive a week?","rel":["LEV-001"],"hook":"Kaymaklı is one of 150 to 200 underground cities cut into Cappadocia's soft rock."},"S":{"428":["Wikipedia: Kaymakli underground city","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymakli_underground_city"]},"rec":{"id":"LEV-KAY","alias":[],"ms":[{"f":"site point","a":"elevation (DEM SRTM 30 m)","v":"1422","u":"m","o":"","unc":"","by":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","pg":"","url":"https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/srtm30m","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"at sites-table coordinate","id":"M3285"},{"f":"city","a":"distance from Nevsehir","v":"19","u":"km","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Kaymakli","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Kaymakli","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City&oldid=1379391888","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3364"},{"f":"city","a":"opened to visitors","v":"1964","u":"text","o":"","unc":"","by":"Wikipedia Kaymakli","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Wikipedia Kaymakli","pg":"","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City&oldid=1379391888","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3365"},{"f":"city","a":"levels (total / open)","v":"8 / 4","u":"count","o":"","unc":"","by":"Derinkuyu Belediyesi","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Derinkuyu Belediyesi","pg":"","url":"https://derinkuyu.bel.tr/sehir/yeralti-sehirleri/21/","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"~40 m total, ~20 m open","id":"M3366"},{"f":"city","a":"area","v":"~100,000","u":"m2","o":"","unc":"","by":"Derinkuyu Belediyesi","yr":"2026","m":"as stated","c":"Derinkuyu Belediyesi","pg":"","url":"https://derinkuyu.bel.tr/sehir/yeralti-sehirleri/21/","b":"S","bb":"","t":"MEASUREMENT","n":"","id":"M3367"}],"lab":[],"eng":[],"ori":[],"gaps":[{"a":"key_structure_dims","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"largest_block","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"block_mass","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"slope_face_angle","r":"no published face/slope angle in sources reached (often n/a for non-pyramidal sites)"},{"a":"wall_batter","r":"no published batter survey in free sources"},{"a":"orientation","r":"no published azimuth reached"},{"a":"corner_precision","r":"no published precision survey in free sources"},{"a":"rock_type","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"geochem_petro","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"quarry_source","r":"not found in free sources reached"},{"a":"mortar","r":"dry-stone construction or no binder analysis in free sources"},{"a":"tool_marks","r":"no tool-mark study in free sources reached"},{"a":"dating","r":"no absolute date extracted"},{"a":"volume_labor","r":"no volume/labour estimate in sources opened"},{"a":"construction_phases","r":"no phase sequence in sources opened"},{"a":"lab_date_material","r":"no lab date with dated material in sources opened"},{"a":"hydrology_acoustics","r":"no published hydrology/acoustic measurement in sources opened"},{"a":"magnetic_radiation","r":"no published magnetic/radiation survey found (searched site name + magnetometry/radiation; Wikipedia, Google Scholar snippets)"},{"a":"metals_clamps","r":"no metal/clamp evidence reported in sources opened"},{"a":"excavation_history","r":"no excavation history row yet"},{"a":"artifacts_found","r":"no finds row yet"}],"dat":[],"aa":[{"id":"AA055","a":"built as refuge from sky beings","who":"see anomaly_claims","main":"Phrygian/Byzantine refuge and storage","ms":"","st":"no data","n":"no AA-specific measurable claim opened; dimensions recorded","nl":1}],"ac":[],"me":[],"ci":[],"cq":[],"sd":[],"sub":[],"site":{"age":"Phrygian-Byzantine (INTERPRETATION)","dm":"historical/stylistic (INTERPRETATION)","lab":"NO","weak":"no lab date opened","unesco":"","dens":"STUB"},"co":{"lat":"38.46556","lon":"34.75056","src":"Wikidata/enwiki (Q118948370)","agree":"agree","b":"V","note":"Wikidata/enwiki (Q118948370) vs OSM node 27151654 delta 0.0056 deg","osm":"https://www.openstreetmap.org/node/27151654"},"src":[{"id":null,"t":"NASA SRTM via OpenTopoData","u":"https://api.opentopodata.org/v1/srtm30m"},{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia Kaymakli","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City&oldid=1379391888"},{"id":null,"t":"Derinkuyu Belediyesi","u":"https://derinkuyu.bel.tr/sehir/yeralti-sehirleri/21/"},{"id":null,"t":"Wikipedia: Kaymakli underground city","u":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymakli_underground_city"},{"id":"VLEV-KAY-5","t":"Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism (muze.gov.tr): Kaymaklı Underground City","u":"https://muze.gov.tr/muze-detay?distId=KYY&sectionId=KYY01"},{"id":"VLEV-KAY-6","t":"UNESCO World Heritage Centre: Göreme National Park and the Rock Sites of Cappadocia","u":"https://whc.unesco.org/en/list/357/"},{"id":null,"t":"Republic of Türkiye Ministry of Culture and Tourism, “Kaymaklı Underground City” (English page).","u":"https://www.ktb.gov.tr/EN-113739/kaymakli-underground-city.html"},{"id":null,"t":"Kültür Portalı (Ministry of Culture and Tourism), “Kaymaklı Yeraltı Şehri”, citing the Kapadokya Alan Başkanlığı. Turkish; translations ours.","u":"https://www.kulturportali.gov.tr/turkiye/nevsehir/gezilecekyer/kaymakli-yeralti-sehri"},{"id":null,"t":"Elif Kahya Yıldırım, “Evaluation of Underground Cities in Nevşehir and its Surroundings in Terms of Cultural Geography”, Asia Minor Studies 13:1 (2025), 77–105.","u":"https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/4358534"},{"id":null,"t":"Xenophon, Anabasis, book 4, chapters 4–5, trans. H. G. Dakyns (Project Gutenberg eBook 1170).","u":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1170"},{"id":null,"t":"Aziz Cumhur Kocalar, “Archeological Underground Settlements and Conservation Problems: Nevşehir Underground Cities (Derinkuyu, Kaymaklı)”, Journal of Awareness 3:3 (2018), 25–46. English abstract.","u":"https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/pub/joa/issue/43505/531817"}],"sum":"On the third floor down, among the storerooms and the kitchens, there is a block of andesite, a hard grey volcanic stone, pierced with 57 holes. The record of the site does not say what it was for. It sits in the dark under a farming village in central Türkiye, in a city that was never meant to be seen, and it is a fair emblem of the whole place: carefully made, plainly useful to someone, and silent about who that someone was.\n\nThe village is Kaymaklı, in Cappadocia, about 19 km from the provincial town of Nevşehir by one count, 15 or 20 km by the two official ones. The ground here sits about 1,420 m above sea level and is made of tuff, the soft rock left behind by ancient volcanic eruptions, easy to carve with a hand tool and firm enough to hold a ceiling. Beneath the village, people carved a city. Türkiye's museum service calls it the widest underground city explored in the region. The local council of nearby Derinkuyu gives its area as about 100,000 square metres, roughly fourteen football pitches of rooms and passages hollowed out of living rock. It runs down at least eight levels. Only four are open to visitors, and they have been since 1964.\n\nEach of those floors had a job. The first holds stables. The second holds a church with a nave and two apses, the curved recesses at the east end where an altar would stand. The third has storage rooms, wineries, kitchens and the block with its 57 holes. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism says the eight floors are built around a ventilation stack, a vertical shaft that carries air down to the deepest rooms, with living spaces about 2 m high and chapels larger and taller than the rooms around them. The ministry's Turkish culture portal lists what a community needs to wait out danger: rooms and halls linked by narrow corridors, wine stores, water cellars, kitchens, food stores, air shafts, wells and a church. It also lists the \"sürgü taşları,\" great rolling stones that could be pushed across a doorway from the inside, sealing a corridor against whoever was coming down it.\n\nThis is not a dead monument. More than 100 tunnels under the modern village are still used by its people as cellars and stables. The ancient name, the museum service says, was Enegüp, and locals still call the place \"Eneği Castle,\" which the geographer Elif Kahya Yıldırım reads as a memory that it was built for shelter. Her 2025 field study adds a detail you feel in the knees: Kaymaklı's tunnels are \"steeper, lower and significantly narrower\" than those at Derinkuyu, its larger neighbour about 9 km away. And Kaymaklı is only one of many. The museum service and Kahya Yıldırım both give the region 150 to 200 underground cities, dug, the service says, for security.\n\nSecurity from what, and when? Here the Turkish state itself gives two answers. The ministry's English page says the city \"was built during the 9 th - 10 th centuries,\" as a place of defence and hiding. The ministry's Turkish culture portal says the first of the eight floors was made in the Hittite period, in the second millennium BC, and was widened into a city in Roman and Byzantine times. Those two official accounts sit roughly two thousand years apart. As Kahya Yıldırım puts it, \"there is no finding supported by archaeological data that can be used to date the underground cities.\"\n\nThe mainstream story is the Byzantine one, and it is coherent. UNESCO, which includes Kaymaklı and Derinkuyu in its listing for Göreme and the rock sites of Cappadocia, dates the cave habitat of the region back to the 4th century, when monks arrived. Later, \"in order to resist Arab invasions,\" communities banded together in places such as Kaymaklı and Derinkuyu, which \"served as places of refuge.\" Arab raids reached the region in 642, and several researchers, Kahya Yıldırım reports, favour digging by local Christians between the mid-7th and early 11th centuries. The plainest cultural evidence in the cities is Byzantine, churches above all. The museum service reads Kaymaklı the same way: a refuge cut by local people for safety and storage. Seen through the eyes of a frontier farmer, it makes hard sense. When raiders cross the plateau, you cannot defend an open village. You can disappear.\n\nThe rival view is not fringe; it is printed on a government portal. Citing the Turkish scholars Gülyaz and Yenipınar, Kahya Yıldırım sets out the older case. Hittite rock reliefs and inscriptions stand in the region. Hittite cities used hidden tunnels, called \"potern,\" in their defences. One underground settlement lies about 500 m from a large Hittite hieroglyphic inscription. The same scholars invoke Xenophon's Anabasis, written about a march in the 4th century BC, which describes houses that were \"underground structures with an aperture like the mouth of a well,\" sheltering goats, sheep, cattle and hens beside wheat, barley and barley beer drunk through reeds. It is a vivid passage, but Xenophon's army was marching \"through Armenian territory\" at the time, far to the east. It proves people lived underground in Anatolia, not that they lived at Kaymaklı. Kahya Yıldırım herself calls the Hittite and Phrygian ideas \"assumptions.\"\n\nThe trouble cuts both ways. A tunnel near a Hittite carving is not a Hittite tunnel. But a church carved into a level proves only that Christians used it, not that they cut the first room. Hollowed rock has no layers for an archaeologist to peel back. Every new owner who widened a chamber erased the tool marks of the last, so the oldest work, if it is old, has been carved away by the very people who inherited it. There is one firm floor beneath the guessing. Kahya Yıldırım reports that metal tools cut these spaces, and cites a geologist's view that this rules out any date before the 3rd millennium BC. That still leaves a window of more than three thousand years.\n\nThen there are the numbers no one can pin down. A 2003 engineering study, cited by Kahya Yıldırım, claimed Kaymaklı could hold 60,000 people. The figure is often repeated. Yet she warns that the number any underground settlement held \"is not certain,\" and a refuge for a week and a home for years would leave very similar rooms. The museum service does not give the depth of the floors still unexcavated. A 2018 study by Aziz Cumhur Kocalar found that the greatest problem is that these sites \"can not be well protected,\" so some of the answers may be crumbling before anyone asks for them.\n\nStep back and the scale becomes the real anomaly. Not one hiding place but 150 to 200, across one volcanic plateau, Kaymaklı alone running at least eight levels down, ventilated, provisioned, fitted with stone doors that close from the inside. That is not a panic response. It is a strategy, held in common across a whole region and maintained over generations, the kind of collective effort people make only when they have learned, the hard way, that the danger always comes back. The Byzantine raiders explain the later chapters well. They do not explain the first spade of tuff, or why the memory of shelter here may run so much deeper than any surviving text.\n\nWhoever first dug downward at Kaymaklı expected something to arrive across the open land that could not be fought, only waited out in the dark. What did they know about that threat that we have forgotten?","qs":["Imagine hearing raiders overhead while you hide underground. What would you need to survive a week?","Villagers still use the old tunnels as cellars and stables. Should a living village be part of a heritage site?","What do you think the andesite block with 57 holes was for?"],"gal":[{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City_large_room.JPG/1280px-Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City_large_room.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City_large_room.JPG","title":"Kaymaklı Underground City large room.JPG","lic":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0","by":"MusikAnimal","cap":"A large room in the Kaymaklı Underground City"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f4/Kaymakli_underground_city_8949_Nevit_Compressor.jpg/1280px-Kaymakli_underground_city_8949_Nevit_Compressor.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaymakli_underground_city_8949_Nevit_Compressor.jpg","title":"Kaymakli underground city 8949 Nevit Compressor.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Nevit Dilmen (talk)","cap":"Kaymakli Underground City in Cappadocia, Turkey. Christians fled the enemies and hid in this underground cities. A remarkable block of andesite with relief text"},{"src":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ab/Kaymakli_underground_city_9003_Nevit_Enhancer.jpg/1280px-Kaymakli_underground_city_9003_Nevit_Enhancer.jpg?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail","page":"https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kaymakli_underground_city_9003_Nevit_Enhancer.jpg","title":"Kaymakli underground city 9003 Nevit Enhancer.jpg","lic":"CC BY-SA 3.0","licurl":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0","by":"Nevit Dilmen (talk)","cap":"Kaymakli Underground City in Cappadocia, Turkey. Christians fled the enemies and hid in this underground cities."}]},"img":null,"md":null,"hh":[{"v":"Volcanic tuff","h":"Made of: Volcanic tuff (rock-cut)","s":[161]}],"hs":{"161":["Wikipedia: Kaymakli underground city (and sources cited there)","https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaymakli_underground_city"]},"lh":{"s":"img/h/LEV-KAY.webp","w":1280,"h":853,"o":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City_large_room.JPG/1280px-Kaymakl%C4%B1_Underground_City_large_room.JPG?utm_source=commons.wikimedia.org&utm_campaign=imageinfo&utm_content=thumbnail"}}