Enjoy breakfast at your hotel or in the town before starting your full-day Cappadocia small-group city tour. You will be picked up from your hotel at 10 AM. Start the day visiting Devrent Valley, also known as the “Imagination Valley,” a most surreal-looking landscape. Your next stop will be Pashabagi also known as the Monks Valley because Christian hermits chose to locate hermit cells and churches in these three-headed pinnacles symbolic of the Holy Trinity. It will be possible to see all the stages in the formation of fairy chimneys at this spot.
Then proceed to Avanos (Venessa), the pottery center of Cappadocia. This village is set on the banks of the Kizilirmak/ Red River. The river gets its name from the red clay it deposits. You can watch the potters at work using kick wheels, the technique which has remained unchanged for generations. You will have lunch in a local restaurant before continuing to Göreme Open Air Museum. The world’s most important Byzantine cave churches are found in these once remote valleys where monks and nuns pursued monastic life from the 3rd century on.
Here, you will be able to see the best-preserved Byzantine cave wall paintings and frescos from the Iconoclastic period through to the end of Seljuk rule. Icons with scenes from the Old Testament and the New Testament above portraits of church fathers and saints depict the structure of the Byzantine universe. See the panoramic viewpoint of Esentepe. With a spectacular view over Göreme, see the complete view of Göreme Valley and Göreme village complete with fairy chimneys, rock formations, and cave houses. End your day at Uchisar Castle on a tall rock, the highest point in the Göreme region. After the tour, you will return to your hotel.
