Comments on: The allure of the underground city

The allure of the underground city

dersins — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:21:30 -0800

Derinkuyu wasn't discovered until 1965, when a resident cleaning the back wall of his cave house broke through a wall and discovered behind it a room that he'd never seen, which led to still another, and another. Eventually, spelunking archeologists found a maze of connecting chambers that descended at least 18 stories and 280 feet beneath the surface, ample enough to hold 30,000 people. [flickr]. [wiki].

By: dersins

dersins — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:23:06 -0800

*packs up his fifty feet of rope, 10 foot pole and iron rations, warms up his infravision, and heads to Turkey*

By: zerobyproxy

zerobyproxy — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:25:13 -0800

Very nice! Thanks for posting this.

By: DU

DU — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:31:09 -0800

What the hell? It's like a Heinlein lunar colony, but in Turkey.

By: Pope Guilty

Pope Guilty — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:33:16 -0800

dersins, buddy, you might wanna pack a longsword. ...and a cleric, as long as that place sat unoccupied...

By: handee

handee — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:35:17 -0800

When I visited Cappadoccia a few years back we stayed in Guzelyurt, which has carved churches and an underground village (rather than a city). A couple of small children served as our guide of the underground village in return for a few million lira, carrying lightbulbs in with them.

By: StickyCarpet

StickyCarpet — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:36:00 -0800

That's like some kind of dream (what's the opposite of a nightmare?) "I walked around the side of my house, and there was a four car garage I'd never seen, then I looked through the bushes in the yard and there was an Olympic sized pool..."

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:37:39 -0800

Not going to Cappadoccia was one of my few regrets from my short trip to Turkey. Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to have just kept quiet about this and gone from a two room cave house to a 12,000 room cave house? Also, I love MeFi posts that use quotes from books. Kudos dersins.

By: DU

DU — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:42:05 -0800

Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to have just kept quiet about this and gone from a two room cave house to a 12,000 room cave house? It would be like Snoopy's or Oscar's (the Grouch) house. You'd go knock on the guy's door and you'd hear all this walking and stair-climbing and elevator sounds and doors opening and closing and like 15 minutes later he'd open the door. Inside is just this one-room hovel. Where were you??

By: sindark

sindark — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:44:18 -0800

I have been inside this underground city. Along with some of the other geological features nearby, it probably justifies the smoky fourteen hour bus ride from Istanbul. If you find yourself staying in the nearby town of Goreme, the Goreme Restaurant has excellent mezze and provides ample opportunity to drink raki and play backgammon in the evenings.

By: otolith

otolith — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:49:31 -0800

I almost checked out the underground city when I was in Cappadoccia a few years ago. However, an intense bout of Ataturk's Revenge required that I not stray further than 20 feet from an outhouse. I did enjoy my stay in a hostel that was carved into a fairy chimney, and I was eventually able to wander a little bit around the Goreme Valley. An amazing, unique place.

By: otolith

otolith — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:57:23 -0800

A flickr search for Goreme Valley also yields some incredible photos of the area.

By: John Kenneth Fisher

John Kenneth Fisher — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:57:44 -0800

If you'd like to learn more about underground cities, watch Cities of the Underworld on the History Channel. Or visit your local library. [end Blossom-very-special-episode-mode] They've done a Cappadoccia episode too, one of the better episodes, if I recall correctly.

By: lupus_yonderboy

lupus_yonderboy — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 08:59:07 -0800

Arg, I can't believe I went to Turkey and missed this! Though I wasn't there very long... A well-written article, decent pictures and an amazing subject -- definitely, "best of the web" -- thanks!

By: Henry C. Mabuse

Henry C. Mabuse — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:06:10 -0800

This happened to me.

By: aramaic

aramaic — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:15:56 -0800

Goddamn I wanna go back there. I hate you now.

By: dejah420

dejah420 — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:42:35 -0800

Wow! I'm following Dershins. This is too cool, I must see it!

By: Jody Tresidder

Jody Tresidder — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:49:08 -0800

Brilliant post, thanks. (So wish I didn't have coward's claustrophobia. Not the real deal, just tediously unyouthful timidity about caves...)

By: From Bklyn

From Bklyn — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:56:12 -0800

Sweet post. I love BLDBLOG. Consistently interesting and well written and sometimes from far far far out of left field.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:00:09 -0800

I've been to Goreme and into many of these nearby troglodyte features and really, this is one of the most amazing places you can go to on Earth. Turkey is such a vast and amazing land.

By: Rumple

Rumple — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:05:32 -0800

The Rock Churches of Ethiopia are also extremely cool.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:10:24 -0800

You know who else went to Turkey and missed this? Billy Hayes

By: smackwich

smackwich — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:10:47 -0800

I'm booking a trip to Turkey as we speak.

By: quin

quin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:13:28 -0800

I was just going to pimp the Cappadoccia episode of Cities of the Underworld but I see I've been beaten to the punch. It really is a very cool documentary. It's stories like this that keep me digging in my back yard. I'm certain that eventually, I'll find some ancient Indian burial tomb that leads to a massive underground complex filled with adventures. Of course the wife's opinion on the subject is "will you please stop putting all those holes in my garden..." She's no fun sometimes.

By: lalochezia

lalochezia — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:13:38 -0800

Been there. done that. Amazing place. People lived there for YEARS. Really claustrophobia-inducing.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:26:48 -0800

Not going to Cappadoccia was one of my few regrets from my short trip to Turkey. Same here. Thanks for this amazing post!

By: Pronoiac

Pronoiac — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 10:31:12 -0800

I'm not sure I trust my sense of direction underground. I'd like a geolocative system that works everywhere. Maybe an accelerometer (underground) & a GPS system (above ground) together could work.

By: Malor

Malor — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:05:54 -0800

The thing that really startles me about this.... these things are gigantic! They must have taken thousands of people working for decades to dig them all out. How on earth were they just... forgotten? Was it deliberate, where one generation of parents simply didn't tell their kids? Or did something really terrible happen?

By: andythebean

andythebean — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:09:59 -0800

Great post!

By: Arch1

Arch1 — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:51:05 -0800

Great post. If you go, though, dersins, make sure you don't lean against the skull sitting on the lip of the well as one of your companions reads about the fate of this relatives down below...

By: Jody Tresidder

Jody Tresidder — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:11:04 -0800

"How on earth were they just... forgotten? Was it deliberate, where one generation of parents simply didn't tell their kids? Or did something really terrible happen?" A very good question, Malor. One Turkish commenter from the post's first link wrote: "For example there are lots of tunnels in Istanbul, lots of them are closed by nature or by humans and no one investigates them much." (I couldn't find anything else, and I haven't seen the TV series about similar cities). I 2nd your query - was it some natural disaster - like an earthquake -that blocked the old entrances until they faded from memory?

By: notyou

notyou — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:50:45 -0800

handee: A couple of small children served as our guide of the underground village in return for a few million lira, carrying lightbulbs in with them. To insert into the lightbulb sockets the ancients carved into the living rock?

By: notyou

notyou — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:54:02 -0800

This reminded me of a novel that was sorta popular a few years back: House of Leaves.

By: bottlebrushtree

bottlebrushtree — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:54:08 -0800

When we were visiting Cappadoccia we took a tour of the underground city. A couple folks in the group found out they were claustrophobic just at the wrong time and really freaked out. The place was amazing though, I'm glad I went. You really get a feeling for the size of them as you walk and walk and walk. At one point during the tour, a 12 year boy with the group stepped backward into the darkness and dropped down a foot, but you could tell that he wasn't sure if he was about to fall down a bottomless pit from the look on his face as he started to go. Watch your step.

By: notyou

notyou — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:57:31 -0800

Pronoiac: I'm not sure I trust my sense of direction underground. I'd like a geolocative system that works everywhere. Maybe an accelerometer (underground) & a GPS system (above ground) together could work. Maybe dershins could loan you a sheet or two of his graph paper.

By: BrotherCaine

BrotherCaine — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:59:10 -0800

Awesome post.I too did not finish Foucault's Pendulum.

By: Iridic

Iridic — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:00:44 -0800

It needn't have been anything particularly sinister, Malor. You'd be surprised by how quickly a society can forget cool subterranean caverns. After the 60 miles of freight tunnels beneath Chicago were closed off in the late fifties, people simply forgot or were incurious about the locked and boarded tunnel entrances in their basements. When the river broke into the system in 1992, the city was completely surprised when those same basements and the subways were flooded with fish-filled water.

By: dersins

dersins — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:21:29 -0800

You'd be surprised by how quickly a society can forget cool subterranean caverns. Another case in point: The Cincinnati subway, which I just posted about the other day.

By: Joakim Ziegler

Joakim Ziegler — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 13:31:00 -0800

I'm sure I had a dream once about exactly this, breaking through some wall in my basement and entering a huge underground complex.

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 14:54:20 -0800

Kinda looks like the caves in the City Museum in St. Louis, only way, way bigger.

By: Espoo2

Espoo2 — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:57:09 -0800

Amazing post. Thank you. I can't wait to see this someday.

By: hurdy gurdy girl

hurdy gurdy girl — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:19:05 -0800

Another great post from dersins--now I can add this place to my list of must-see attractions, after the Wieliczka Salt Mine.

By: nasreddin

nasreddin — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 18:48:02 -0800

Do these date from Byzantine times? Or are they Turkish?

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 19:05:48 -0800

Those Ethiopian rock churches are awesome. And speaking of awesome, anyone having trouble with "Foucault's Pendulum" would do well to seek out the talking book version, with none other than Tim Curry reading. It is unfortunately abridged, but still, I'd highly recommend it.

By: LobsterMitten

LobsterMitten — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:00:45 -0800

nasreddin: early Christian hideouts, as I recall.

By: advil

advil — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 23:20:18 -0800

nice post.

By: exlotuseater

exlotuseater — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 23:58:34 -0800

"For example there are lots of tunnels in Istanbul, lots of them are closed by nature or by humans and no one investigates them much." Well, good. They sealed them in order to contain SHUB-NIGGURATH, THE BLACK GOAT OF THE WOODS WITH A THOUSAND YOUNG! Iä! Iä! Sheesh.

By: languagehat

languagehat — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 05:42:17 -0800

Do these date from Byzantine times? Or are they Turkish? Much earlier. From the Wikipedia article: "First built by the Phrygians in the 8th-7th centuries B.C according to the Turkish Department of Culture, the underground city at Derinkuyu was enlarged in the Byzantine era."

By: Alvy Ampersand

Alvy Ampersand — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 17:36:09 -0800

Wow. Move over Diefen bunker, I've got a new dream house!