The Penn Stater Magazine

The Cave Town of Zelve

May 19, 2011 at 1:50 pm Tina Hay Leave a comment

Hiking into the ghost town of Zelve. (Click to view larger.)

No one quite knows exactly how many centuries ago people started living in the caves of Cappadocia. But in the case of one cave town—called Zelve—we know exactly when they moved out.

The former town of Zelve is a honeycomb of caves in the rocks, scattered across three valleys. One of the valleys once housed a monastery, which, like the town, was carved out of the rocks.

Turkey is prone to earthquakes, and an earthquake hit the area in 1950. Two years later the government decided it wasn’t safe for people to live in the caves of Zelve anymore, and set up another place for them to live—called Yeni Zelve, which means “New Zelve”—a mile or so away.

One of the many dwellings in the cave town of Zelve.

The ghost town was turned into the Zelve Open Air Museum in the 1960s. Today, for a small admission fee, you can hike into the valley, climb around some of the caves, and imagine what it was like to live in among the rocks just 50 years ago. A few members of our group were brave enough to even crawl through a rock tunnel connecting one valley to the next. I was not one of them!

By the way, it’s not just earthquakes that are a concern. There’s also the constant process of erosion that causes the rock dwellings to shift and crumble. The fragility of the environment was underscored when our tour director, Gökhan, pointed out a rock church in Zelve that collapsed not long ago. Five years ago he was still taking tour groups into that church, but today it’s just a pile of rocks.

Tina Hay, editor

Entry filed under: Alumni Association. Tags: Cappadocia, Legendary Turkey, Yeni Zelve, Zelve, Zelve Open Air Museum.