Cappadocia - Turkey

Overview

Wherever you lay your eyes around in Cappadocia you will see carved spaces and you don't really know whether they were tombs, houses, dens, hermitages of the 4th or 5th century A.D. or if they housed churches or monastic complexes. They could just be stables or warehouses.

Maybe through centuries they were graves and hermitages that turned into monastery complexes, they were next ravaged and finally became the dwellings of christian or muslim families. On the one side Cappadocia looked to the Asia Minor, the Mediterranean and the Aegean civilizations, on the other to Anatolia and the Middle East cultures.

Like being on a scale, the history of this place simply changed its center of gravity. It saw Hitites passing by, worshipping their gods in outside areas, teaching the people of Cappadocia how to carve their deities in rocks, Assyrian merchants who taught them writing, Phrygians who showed them how to carve the stone, Lydians and Persians. In 322 B.C. Alexander the Great came here followed by his army.