Cappadocia: The People Who Lived Inside the Earth

Most people only see the surface of Cappadocia: fairy chimneys, carved cliffs and balloons at sunrise. But beneath one small town in central Turkey, people cut at least seven floors into solid rock. The local story says they were found in 1963. Yet a British scholar had already climbed down into those tunnels around 1910, and wrote down what he found. This is the story of Cappadocia: a land made by volcanoes, where for more than a thousand years people carved their homes, their churches and their hiding places into the rock, above ground and below it. From the cave villages photographed in the 1880s to the underground city of Derinkuyu (Malakopi), the families who left in 1923–24, Zelve abandoned in 1952, and the tunnels found beneath Nevşehir in 2013–14. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Seven floors beneath a town 1:04 Made by volcanoes 2:05 Carving a home in the rock 3:23 Churches in the rock 4:24 Going down 5:50 Derinkuyu 8:21 The people who left 9:30 Rediscovered 10:24 The rock still holds their shape 📚 KEY SOURCES • R. M. Dawkins, Modern Greek in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1916) and Journal of Hellenic Studies (1910): Malakopi, the stone doors, the wells, the 1909 nights underground • Çiner & Aydar (2019), "A Fascinating Gift from Volcanoes", Landscapes and Landforms of Turkey (Springer) • Aydan & Ulusay (2013), Rock Mechanics and Rock Engineering 46: Derinkuyu; Nývlt et al. (2016), Procedia Engineering • Leo the Deacon, History III.1 (trans. Talbot & Sullivan, 2005); J. B. Bury (1912), citing al-Yaʿqubi • L. Rodley, Cave Monasteries of Byzantine Cappadocia (Cambridge, 2010) • UNESCO World Heritage List, site 357 (1985); Nevşehir underground complex: National Geographic (2015), Coşkun et al. (2016) "About 85 metres" is a reported figure, and "20,000 people" is an estimate of capacity, not a count. Nobody knows how many people actually sheltered underground at once. 🏛️ Epic Cities explores one great city every episode: how it was built, what happened there, and how it survived. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. 🎬 CREDITS & ATTRIBUTIONS Footage under CC BY (attribution required): "Cappadocia 4K | TURKEY" by yasin ilcebay, CC BY 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/..., via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... (trimmed, cropped, resized, colour-matched; text added over some shots). U.S. Government footage (public domain): U.S. Air Force video by SSgt Michael A. Richmond via DVIDS ("B-Roll: Incirlik AB Outdoor Recreation Cappadocia Trip", DVIDS 897017). The appearance of U.S. Department of War (DoW) visual information does not imply or constitute DoW endorsement. Photo under CC BY: Church of St Theodore, Derinkuyu, photo by Klaus-Peter Simon, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi... Public-domain photographs, drawings and maps via Wikimedia Commons (credit lines also shown on screen): John Henry Haynes (1884–87), Charles Texier (1864, 1882), R. M. Dawkins (JHS 1910; 1916), A. K. Johnston (1888–97), Karamanlidika inscription. Stock footage (Pexels and Pixabay licences): Abdulkadir Aktürk, Adil, Ahmed, Ahmet Kurt, Alexandre Henry Alves, Alper Özden, Cihan Çimen, Devilishly Good, doctor on travel, Enes Burak Çevik, Ezgi Güçlü, Fatih Doğrul, Hasan Yılmaz, Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz, Melike Berber, Mihman Duğanlı, Okan Demiray, Orkun Uzunsaç, Rose TheGuide, Volkan Yılmaz, Zak H, Ömer Derinyar, lumosajans, yunusgurel and other Pixabay contributors. Maps: Natural Earth (public domain). ℹ️ AI USE: scenes marked "AI reconstruction" on screen are AI-generated illustrations (Kie.ai: Seedream images, Seedance video), not real or historical footage. They are used only where no real images can be shown: the 1963 cellar, the underground rooms, stone doors, shafts, wells and stairs. Narration voice and music: ElevenLabs. #Cappadocia #Derinkuyu #History #EpicCities #Documentary