Sobessos sits among low hills inside the boundaries of Şahinefendi village in the Ürgüp district, twenty-odd kilometres from Ürgüp. What survives here is unusual for Cappadocia: not rock-cut chambers but the masonry of a small country town, laid out with streets, a bath and mosaic floors. On present archaeological evidence the place began to function as a modest rural settlement in the 4th century AD, grew as Christianity took hold in the region, and by the reign of Leo VI (886–912) was being named as the seat of a bishop.
Remains around the village were first noticed by chance, and once it was clear that an ancient city stood here the Nevşehir Museum Directorate began excavation in 2002. The town was built on volcanic ground, in a position secure in strategic terms and on fertile land. When it was first found it was taken for the capital of the kingdom of Cappadocia, but no evidence was recovered to support that and the claim was given up.
The oldest building uncovered so far is known as Villa I, and its three lives can be read one on top of the other. It began as the house of a local landowner: a rectangular plan fronted by a colonnaded portico, entered through a door on the north, with rooms wrapped in an L around a courtyard running along the south-east. Its floors were laid with geometric mosaics, and those mosaics — along with the general plan — survived everything that followed. After the 4th century the house became a church, a change now traceable only in a handful of architectural fragments found in its atrium. Later it was reduced to a chapel, an east–west room put up inside the older walls from reused blocks with little care. From the second phase onwards the ground inside and outside the building was given over to burials, and many of the graves around Villa I and the adjacent cemetery chapel still carry their distinctive carved lids.
The bath block is thought to be contemporary with the villa and follows a variant of the Anatolian row-type plan, its rooms set out in an L. Running west to east are the caldarium, the tepidarium and two cold rooms; running north to south are the changing room and the steam room. Here too the floors are mosaic. The best-known panel is a pair of sandals set at the threshold of the second cold room — a visual instruction, in effect, about where shoes were left. In the changing room, damaged but still legible, circular panels framed by a guilloche border hold geometric and plant ornament. Beyond these two buildings the excavated area includes a cluster of houses served by a planned system of streets and lanes.
The mosaics are the most striking of the finds, worked with skill in coloured stone and glass; their motifs include the swastika, the cross, the meander, the eight-pointed star and the plait. The site is reached by the village road; the address is 50400 Şahinefendi/Ürgüp/Nevşehir.
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).
Visiting hours
- Hours
- 08:00 - 17:00
