Zelve Open Air Museum

About this place

Zelve was emptied in the space of five years. Between 1949 and 1954, after rockfalls had killed villagers, the last families were moved step by step to a new village two kilometres away, and what they left behind is what you walk through today: an entire settlement cut into the cliffs on the northern flank of Aktepe, spread across three linked valleys, with houses, tunnels, dovecotes, a bulgur mill, a winery and a small mosque whose minaret stands on four slender columns. That is the essential difference from Göreme. There you enter a monastery to look at frescoes; here you wander a village where Muslims and Christians lived side by side until the population exchange of 1923, and whose last Muslim families left only in the 1950s, so it feels like stepping into the homes of neighbours who left only recently. The churches are older than Göreme's, most of them pre-dating the iconoclast era, so instead of painted saints you find simple red-ochre symbols: a fish in Balıklı, grape clusters in Üzümlü, bold relief crosses in the columned Direkli Church at the valley exit. Anyone expecting the splendour of the Dark Church will be disappointed. Anyone who enjoys scrambling between rocks, climbing a metal ladder from one valley to the next and ducking through unlit tunnels will find the most enjoyable two hours in Cappadocia here, with a fraction of Göreme's crowds. The same ticket covers Paşabağ, or Monks Valley, a kilometre down the road, home to the most famous multi-headed mushroom fairy chimneys and, inside a three-headed one, a chapel and hermit's cell dedicated to St Simeon Stylites, the ascetic who made his name near Aleppo in the fifth century. Do Paşabağ first in the morning before the Red Tour coaches arrive, then Zelve, or reverse the order in late afternoon. It is no place for pushchairs: paths are steep in parts, tunnels get chained off when the rock is unstable, and trainers are the minimum. In August the valleys are a shadeless oven from eleven until four; in winter snow settles on the chimneys and the museum usually shortens its hours. By car it is roughly fifteen minutes from Göreme or ten from Avanos, and there is no regular public transport to the gate.