The hidden canyon of Cappadocia — a 14km river gorge carved through the volcanic plateau with 105 Byzantine rock-cut churches frescoed in the 9th-12th centuries, a 400-step descent, and the smell of poplar and water
Ihlara Valley (Peristrema Valley in Byzantine sources) lies 40km southwest of the Cappadocia town cluster of Nevshir and Goreme — a 14km gorge carved by the Melendiz River through the 500m-thick ignimbrite (compressed volcanic ash) plateau of the Hasandagi volcano. The canyon is 100m deep in its central section, the walls of compressed volcanic tuff (the same rock that forms the fairy chimneys of Goreme, but here eroded by the river into a vertical-walled canyon rather than individual columns) containing 105 Byzantine monastic cave churches, carved and painted between the 7th and 13th centuri…
The Cappadocia region (central Anatolia, the area between the Kizilirmak and Euphrates rivers) was one of the earliest and most densely settled Christian communities in Asia Minor: the apostle Paul passed through Cappadocia on his first missionary journey (recorded in Acts 16:6), the Cappadocian Fathers (Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, Gregory of Nazianzus — three of the most important theologians in early Christian history) were born and worked in the region in the 4th century CE, and the monastic communities that carved the Ihlara churches belonged to the Basilian tradition established…