Quick Facts: Location: Derinkuyu, Nevşehir Province, Cappadocia, Turkey | Date/Year: Rediscovered 1963; origins debated (roughly 8th century BC to 10th century AD) | Status: Ongoing (builders and full extent still unresolved) | Depth: About 60 to 85 meters across 18 levels, with room for an estimated 20,000 people
A man in the Cappadocian village of Derinkuyu was renovating his house in 1963 when, as the story goes, he noticed his chickens vanishing behind a wall. He knocked through it and found a narrow passage in the rock, leading down into the dark. It didn't stop for a very long way.
The Rock That Wanted to Be a Home
To understand Derinkuyu, start with the ground it sits in. Millions of years ago, eruptions from volcanoes like Mount Erciyes and Hasan Dağı blanketed central Anatolia in ash. That ash compressed into tuff, a rock soft enough to carve with iron tools and one that hardens once exposed to air. The people of Cappadocia figured this out early. They dug cellars, storerooms, churches, and eventually whole villages into it.
The region also sat on one of history's busiest crossroads. Hittites, Phrygians, Persians, Romans, Byzantines, Seljuks, and Ottomans all moved armies through central Anatolia, and none of them were gentle with the farmers living there. The Greek name for the place was Malakopea. The Turkish name, Derinkuyu, simply means "deep well."
A cave you can hide in is useful. A cave that holds thousands of people, their goats, and a year's worth of grain is a different kind of structure, and that is what that renovated wall opened onto.
What Was Down There
Archaeologists who followed the chicken-hole passage found a vertical city. The upper levels held stables, with mangers carved straight into the rock so livestock could be brought in with the people. Below those came kitchens, storerooms, wine and oil presses, and living quarters. Deeper still were a chapel with a cross-shaped plan and rooms thought to have served as a school.
The engineering is what stops visitors in their tracks. About 50 ventilation shafts pull air through the levels, and a deep well reaches the lower floors. The temperature stays at roughly 13°C (55°F) year-round. The entrances were hidden inside ordinary houses and courtyards, with estimates running as high as 600, so a raiding party walking through the village above would see nothing unusual.
The defenses were built in to the design. At key passages, round stone doors up to about 1.5 meters tall and weighing around 500 kilograms (more than 1,000 pounds) could be rolled across a corridor. They were operated from the inside. A small hole in the center let defenders see, and perhaps jab a spear at, anyone on the other side. Narrow, low tunnels forced intruders to crouch and move single file.
Local guides will also tell you that a tunnel nearly 9 kilometers (about 5.5 miles) long links Derinkuyu to the neighboring underground city of Kaymaklı. It's an appealing claim. But no archaeologist has verified a continuous, walkable passage, so treat it as plausible rather than proven.
Did You Know? Derinkuyu's chimney-like ventilation shafts did double duty. Besides moving air, they are often explained as a kind of early communication system, since voices carry between levels along them. A person on one floor could reportedly pass warnings down through the rock without anyone walking a step. And the doors? They can't be opened from the outside at all.
Who Dug It?
Nobody has pinned this down, and that's the real mystery.
The Phrygian theory. Some scholars attribute the earliest digging to the Phrygians around the 8th and 7th centuries BC, partly because of similar rock-cut architecture in their highlands. The supporting evidence is thin. Dating carved rock is notoriously difficult, since there are no layers of construction to read the way you can with built walls.
The Hittite theory. A smaller camp argues the origins go back even further, to Hittite times, more than 3,000 years ago. This view is the most contested of all.
The Byzantine theory. This is the best-supported explanation for the city as visitors see it. Between roughly the 7th and 10th centuries AD, Arab armies raided Byzantine Anatolia repeatedly, and Christian communities in Cappadocia had every reason to disappear underground. The chapel, the wine presses, and the defensive design all fit a population hiding for weeks or months at a time, and then climbing back out to farm.
The layered-city theory. Many researchers now think it's a combination: a modest earlier cellar system, expanded generation after generation. Each new threat, Persian, Arab, Mongol, or otherwise, pushed the diggers a few meters deeper. By that reading, Derinkuyu wasn't built in a single project. It accumulated, like a coral reef made of fear and sensible planning.
You'll also see claims online that the city was built to survive a cataclysm or by lost civilizations. Nothing in the carved rock supports that. The chapel crosses, livestock stalls, and cooking areas point to ordinary people with a very practical problem.
The question of who lived here last has a clearer answer. Cappadocia's Greek Orthodox population was still using such spaces within living memory, and the area's Greek residents left in the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. After that, the entrances got sealed, forgotten, or turned into cellars. That's partly why a chicken-hunting homeowner could stumble on it forty years later.
Where Things Stand Today
Derinkuyu opened to tourists in 1969, six years after the discovery. Only a fraction of it is accessible, around eight levels. The rest remains closed for safety and preservation reasons, and some deeper sections have never been fully surveyed. It's easily one of the most visited sites in Cappadocia.
Derinkuyu also turned out not to be alone. Cappadocia contains more than 200 underground complexes, with around 40 reaching at least two levels, and Kaymaklı is the other one most visitors tour. In 2014, construction work in Nevşehir uncovered another large underground complex, which Turkish media reported could rival or exceed Derinkuyu in scale. Excavation and research there are still moving forward.
So the mystery is still open. We have a rough construction window of many centuries, a strong case for why it was used, and a map that stops where the tour route stops. For stories like this one, the buried parts tend to matter most, and "For another man-made underground mystery with almost no written record, read our article on the Longyou Caves in China."
FAQ
How deep does Derinkuyu go?
Estimates range from about 60 to 85 meters (roughly 200 to 280 feet) across 18 levels. Visitors can access roughly eight of them.
Who built Derinkuyu Underground City?
No one knows for certain. Evidence suggests it grew over many centuries, with the Phrygians, and possibly earlier peoples, digging the early spaces and Byzantine Christians expanding it into a refuge between the 7th and 10th centuries AD.
Can you visit it today?
Yes. It has been open to the public since 1969, though only part of the city is accessible. Expect narrow, low passages.
If a farmer's chickens led the way into a city holding 20,000 people, what else in Cappadocia is still waiting behind someone's kitchen wall?
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