Aksaray sits on the western side of Cappadocia, beneath the volcano of Hasan Dağı, and it holds some of the region's best walking country. Most visitors come for Ihlara Valley, a deep gorge lined with painted rock churches, which ends at the cliff-cut Selime Cathedral. Close by, the small town of Güzelyurt has its own valley of churches and a church that became a mosque. East of the city lies Aşıklı Höyük, one of the places where people first settled for good, and in town a museum and a fourteenth-century medrese fill in the rest of the story.
Ihlara Valley
Ihlara ranks among the world's largest canyons. An ancient eruption of Hasan Dağı laid down volcanic deposits here, and weather and the Melendiz stream wore it down into a gorge as much as 120 metres deep. Its churches and dwellings spread along fourteen kilometres, from the town of Ihlara through Belisırma and Yaprakhisar to Selime. The old name for the people of the valley, Peristremma, came from the way the Melendiz winds through it.
A stair of 382 steps takes you down to the green floor of the gorge, where churches and living rooms follow one another along the path. The soft rock let monks carve and paint them. Of the 105 churches known, fourteen are open to visitors, among them Ağaçaltı, Sümbüllü, Yılanlı, Kokar, Pürenliseki, Direkli, Saint George, Ala and Bahattin Samanlığı. The paintings near Ihlara show eastern influence, while those around Belisırma follow Byzantine models.
Selime Cathedral
At the far end of the gorge, Selime Cathedral is carved into the rock on two floors, with two rows of columns dividing it into three aisles. The official portal describes it as Cappadocia's biggest cathedral, built at some point from the eighth to the eleventh century. Its top level was made as a fortress, and you can still pick out its walls and firing positions. Clergy of the region were trained here. Among the fresco subjects are the Ascension, the Annunciation, the Nativity and the Dormition, and the pyramid-shaped kitchen with its lamp niches is worth seeking out.
Güzelyurt: Monastery Valley and the church-mosque
Güzelyurt has a valley of its own, about five kilometres long, running through the middle of town with vineyards, tufa and coloured rock along it. The walk starts at the Kilise Cami and passes the churches of Sivişli, Koç, Çömlekçi, Kalburlu and Kömürlü. Gregory of Nazianzus, the theologian born nearby, worked from Güzelyurt in the fourth century, and the town remained a place where Turks and Greeks lived side by side until the population exchange of 1924.
The Kilise Cami itself was built in 385 under the emperor Theodosius and dedicated to Gregory the Theologian. It was much altered, becoming a three-aisled basilica in the restoration of 1835, and it was turned into a mosque after 1924. Its bell tower became a minaret, and the carved wooden iconostasis, painted with madder, was moved and set up as the mihrab. It is also known as the Little Ayasofya.
Aşıklı Höyük, where people stayed put
Aşıklı Höyük, near the village of Kızılkaya, lies on the bank of the Melendiz some twenty-five kilometres east of the city. People lived on this mound without a break from roughly 8200 to 7500 BC, and that continuity is the reason it matters: here, layer by layer, a community can be watched giving up seasonal hunting and wandering for a settled life. The first homes were oval huts of reed and wood, partly sunk into the ground; later came rectangular mudbrick houses, and the dead were buried curled up beneath the floors.
In Aksaray town
The Aksaray Museum, in a building of 2004, carries the story from the Neolithic to the Ottoman period with finds from Aşıklı Höyük, Musular, Güvercinkayası and Acemhöyük, including an agate necklace from an Aşıklı grave. It began in 1969 in the Zinciriye Medrese, which the Karamanid Halil Mirza Bey built in 1336. The medrese takes its name, the chained one, from chains once hung across its portal arch to keep animals out, and its crenellated walls make it look like a small fort. It was a prison from 1940 and now hosts the municipality's cultural events.
