Göreme National Park and the rock sites of Cappadocia share a single World Heritage listing. The site's defining feature is its rock: tuff from Erciyes and Hasan mountains, worn by wind and water into extraordinary shapes, and carved by people into rooms. Göreme lies 10 kilometres from Nevşehir and can be reached by public transport.
The carving had a practical reason. Rooms cut into tuff stay mild in winter and cool in summer, so they are comfortable in every season. People have lived in the region without a break since the Chalcolithic period.
Between the seventh and thirteenth centuries Göreme in particular became an important centre of Christianity, settled by Christians escaping persecution. That is why the valley is read as a religious landscape as well as a geological one.
Cappadocia as a region reaches well beyond the park: to the Kızılırmak in the north, Yeşilhisar in the east, the Hasan and Melendiz mountains in the south, Aksaray in the west and Kırşehir in the north-west. The World Heritage listing also extends past Göreme, taking in the underground cities of Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı, the Karain dovecotes, Karlık Church, the Theodoro Church at Yeşilöz and the archaeological area of Soğanlı.
Getting there
- Access
- Göreme lies ten kilometres from Nevşehir and public transport runs there.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Nevşehir as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -0.1 °C in January to 21.4 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (58 mm) and lightest in August (8 mm). Long-term means for 1959-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
