Until the 19th century Cappadocia's past was thought to stop at the 1st century BC. Then the new sciences pushed it back: traces of settlement here are now visible at 5000 to 4000 BC. Writing reached Anatolia through the Assyrians, who founded trading colonies in this region around 2000 BC, and the Hittite kingdom held it around 1000 BC.
In the 6th century BC Cappadocia joined with the Lydian kingdom and became the stage for a great civilisation; it fell under Persian rule around 521 BC, and Alexander of Macedon, passing through in 334 BC, took it and appointed one of his commanders to govern it in his name. That commander, Ariarathes I, founded the kingdom of Cappadocia in 323 BC.
Ürgüp, which sits in the middle of that kingdom, lived its most brilliant period then — the municipality's account puts nearly thirty thousand people in the town at the time, and counts Ürgüp alongside Kemerhisar and Kayseri among the civilised cities of Cappadocia. Rome invaded the kingdom around 27 BC and made it a province.
Christianity is what shaped the landscape visitors come for. From AD 53 churches and chapels were cut here, and the district became a refuge for Christians persecuted in Jerusalem and Syria: the caves the Hittites had dug and the valleys carved by volcanic rock and erosion both served as hiding places. When religious freedom was granted in 336 the faith spread quickly through Cappadocia, and the region became a centre for priests who withdrew to live on pillars. Many of the churches that can be visited today were built from the 5th century onwards and began to be painted after iconoclasm ended in 842. After the Seljuk state fell to the Mongol raids, the district passed to the Karamanid principality, and mosques and caravanserais were built beside the churches and monasteries.
