The Penn Stater Magazine

The Fairy Chimneys of Cappadocia

May 19, 2011 at 10:48 am Tina Hay 1 comment

Our first full day in Cappadocia was cloudy and rainy, and while the avid photographers among us would have preferred sunny skies, we still did a lot of oohing and aahing at the eerie landscape and natural beauty of the place.

The weird terrain is the result of a couple of volcanoes in the area that have erupted more than once over the years, laying down a layer of ash-based rock called tuff, followed by layers of molten lava. That plus the natural erosion over time has produced what the locals call “fairy chimneys”—so named because the people long ago assumed that only fairies could create something so funky.

In some places the area reminds you of the Southwestern part of the U.S.; it looks vaguely like the Grand Canyon in some places and a little like Bryce Canyon in others.

One of the best places to see the fairy chimneys is the Göreme Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. (Göreme is pronounced approximately “gurr uh may”—that umlaut requires a vowel sound that we don’t have in English, and it comes up all the time in the Turkish language.)

Besides the cool rock formations and the various cave dwellings carved into them, the Göreme Open Air Museum also has a number of small churches—more like chapels, really—that were carved into the rocks between the fifth and 12th centuries. The cave churches have beautiful, centuries-old frescoes on their walls and ceilings, but alas, you can’t take photos inside the churches.

(Well, tourists can’t take photos. But you can see photos that Netherlands-based photographer Dick Osseman took inside the churches here. The frescoes really are pretty cool.)

The countryside around the town of Göreme and other villages throughout Cappadocia is also full of places where you can pull off the road and check out the view, so the Open-Air Museum isn’t the only place to see the fairy chimneys. Heck, our hotel in Uçhisar is one of the best places; it overlooks a beautiful vista called Pigeon Valley, which you can see in the photo at left.

And about those holes in the rocks: People were living in those holes as recently as the 1950s. No joke! More on that later.

Tina Hay, editor

P.S. I’ve posted an album of photos from our visit to Cappadocia to the Alumni Assiociation’s Facebook page.

Entry filed under: Alumni Association. Tags: Cappadocia, cave churches, Dick Osseman, fairy chimneys, Legendary Turkey, Pigeon Valley, tuff, UNESCO World Heritage sites.