Guide
Uçhisar Castle stands within the Uçhisar district of Nevşehir, six kilometres from the centre of the province, on a high hill where steep rocks have formed a natural fortress.
The clearest information about settlement at Uçhisar reaches back to the Roman and Byzantine periods, though some research suggests that the castle may have been made ready for use between the fourth and the first centuries BC. Of the periods since antiquity, the heaviest use is thought to have come in the middle of the seventeenth century AD, when Christian monks occupied it, and from later times down to the present it is thought to have served for defence.
Uçhisar is the highest settlement in Cappadocia. What is known about settlement here is not firm and rests on the limited evidence that archaeological work has produced.
Other archaeological sites in the region, scientific research, the work of the historian and documentary maker Tekin Gün Topraklı, who studied the area over a long period, and the finds and numismatic evidence from the excavations at Aşıklı Höyük all throw light on the history of the region: traces of settlement there begin between 8000 and 5500 BC. Because the castle stands on a hill commanding the country around, it is thought to have served for defence in certain periods.
Surface surveys show that the region was in use in the Assyrian and Hittite periods, and the earliest written tablets of Anatolia were found in the excavations at Kültepe and Acemhöyük. On this evidence Uçhisar Castle appears to have been used in a number of different periods.
