Kapadokya Peribacaları (Cappadocian Fairy Chimneys)

The Stone That Shaped a Region

The valleys around Göreme, Ürgüp, and Uçhisar hold rock formations unlike anything else in Anatolia. 

Some rise only a few metres. Others exceed forty. Many carry a darker stone cap balanced on a narrower column beneath, and the landscape they create has an appearance that local people, over centuries, decided could only belong to spirits.

They called these formations peribacaları, fairy chimneys. The name comes from two Turkish words: peri (fairy, spirit, supernatural being) and baca (chimney, flue). A peribacası is, literally, a chimney belonging to a fairy. The plural form, peribacaları, treats the entire landscape as a single living thing.

The word peri in Turkish appears across a wide range of registers. Perili means haunted. 

Peri masalı means fairy tale. Periler in Anatolian folk belief were supernatural beings associated with natural places, particularly springs, caves, and unusual rock formations, and they were treated with caution rather than delight. 

How They Formed

During the Neogene period, roughly between 10 and 2 million years ago, volcanoes including Erciyes Dağı, Hasan Dağı, and Göllüdağ deposited thick layers of ash and lava across the central Anatolian plateau. This material compressed over time into two distinct stone types: tüf (tuff), a soft and porous volcanic ash rock, and ignimbrit (ignimbrite), a denser layer formed from welded pyroclastic flows.

Water and wind eroded these two materials at different rates. The softer tuff wore away faster. Where a harder cap of basalt or ignimbrite sat above a column of soft tuff, it slowed the erosion directly beneath it. The surrounding material was gradually stripped away, leaving the protected column standing. The darker cap that gives the formations their characteristic silhouette is this resistant upper layer, still doing what it has done for millions of years.

The process continues. Some formations eventually lose their caps and begin to erode more rapidly. Others split. The landscape is still being shaped.

One small language note: tüf entered Turkish through French rather than directly from English or Latin, which explains the French vowel ü rather than the English u. This is a common pattern in Turkish scientific vocabulary from the late Ottoman period, when French was the main channel for Western technical terminology.

A Region of Many Valleys

Kapadokya is a region containing dozens of named valleys, each with a distinct geological character and historical layer.

Göreme Vadisi holds the highest concentration of rock-cut churches and monastic complexes. It forms the core of the Göreme Milli Parkı, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, and contains the Göreme Açık Hava Müzesi (Göreme Open Air Museum), where several Byzantine-era churches survive with their frescoes largely intact.

Those churches carry names worth knowing. Karanlık Kilise (Dark Church) received almost no natural light through its single small window in the narthex. Because of this, the frescoes inside were never exposed to sunlight, and they remain among the most vivid in the region. Karanlık (dark, unlit) is the adjective Turkish uses for physical darkness as well as moral opacity: a karanlık oda is a darkroom, a karanlık düşünce is a sinister thought.

Elmalı Kilise (Apple Church) takes its name from the figure of the Archangel Michael painted in the dome of the main apse, holding a sphere that resembles an apple. Elma (apple) is one of the first words in any Turkish vocabulary list, but here it names a theological object misread as a fruit, and the misreading stuck.

Yılanlı Kilise (Serpent Church) is named for the fresco near the entrance, which shows Saints George and Theodore killing a dragon together on horseback. The dragon was interpreted by later viewers as a yılan (snake), and that reading became the church's name. Yılanlı means containing a snake or snake-like.

Devrent Vadisi, known also as Hayal Vadisi (Imagination Valley), contains formations that resemble animals and figures. This valley has no carved interiors. Its character is purely geological and visual, and it rewards the kind of looking that assigns meaning to shapes.

Kızılçukur Vadisi (Red Valley) is named for the iron oxide in its tuff, which gives the stone a deep reddish tone in afternoon light. Kızıl is the Turkish word for deep red or crimson, distinct from kırmızı (red in general). It appears in Kızıldeniz (the Red Sea) and Kızılay (the Red Crescent, literally Red Moon).

Paşabağları, near Avanos, contains some of the most photographed multi-headed formations in the region. The site is associated with Aziz Simeon, a 5th-century Christian hermit who, according to local tradition, lived atop one of the columns.

Zelve Açık Hava Müzesi (Zelve Open Air Museum) was an inhabited settlement used continuously from the Byzantine period until its residents were relocated beginning in 1952, when structural collapse risk made continued habitation unsafe. The site shows what sustained habitation inside the formations looked like: connected rooms, storage spaces, stables, and places of worship, all carved from the same stone over many generations.

People Inside the Stone

The soft tuff of Kapadokya made it possible to carve rooms with basic tools. Communities across different periods cut homes, tunnels, churches, storerooms, and entire underground complexes into the rock.

The yeraltı şehirleri (underground cities) are the most striking example. Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı are the largest open to visitors. Derinkuyu extends deep underground across multiple levels, with ventilation shafts, water wells, communal spaces, and narrow passages that could be sealed with large rolling stone doors. The exact origins of these cities remain debated, with evidence pointing to construction at least as early as the early Christian era and possibly earlier. The site is estimated to have sheltered thousands of people during periods of external threat.

Yeraltı means underground or subterranean: yer (ground, place, earth) + altı (beneath, under). The same structure appears in yeraltı suyu (groundwater) and yeraltı ekonomisi (underground economy). Şehir (city) is one of the foundational items in Turkish urban vocabulary: şehirli means a city person, şehirleşme means urbanization.

The rock-cut churches of Göreme date primarily from the 9th to 13th centuries and reflect the Byzantine Christian tradition that dominated the region during this period. Their fresco cycles survived partly because of the region's geographical remoteness and partly through accident. During one period, several churches were used as pigeon houses. The accumulated droppings coated the painted surfaces and, unintentionally, preserved them from light and moisture damage.

Kapadokya Today

The valleys are still lived in. Tüf stone remains a common building material in the villages around Ürgüp, Avanos, and Mustafapaşa, used for walls, storage rooms, and cellars in the same way it has been for centuries. Old güvercinlikler (dovecotes) are still visible carved into cliff faces across the region. Pigeon droppings were historically collected as fertilizer for the vineyards and orchards that grow in the valley floors, and this connection between the rock, the birds, and agriculture is older than the Byzantine churches.

The bağlar (vineyards) of Kapadokya produce grapes in volcanic soil at high altitude, and winemaking here has a history going back to antiquity. Walking through Kızılçukur or Gülüdere in autumn, the smell of cut stone mingles with the smell of ripe fruit. It is a combination that belongs to this landscape and nowhere else.

The hot air balloons that now rise above Göreme at dawn have become the region's most recognized image internationally. For the people who live here, the valleys are also the place where they grow food, keep animals, and walk to work. Both things are true at the same time.

The Name Kapadokya

The name Kapadokya comes from the ancient Persian Katpatuka, commonly interpreted as "land of beautiful horses," though the exact etymology remains a matter of scholarly discussion. The region was known in antiquity for horse breeding, and its horses were traded across the ancient world. The Persians administered Kapadokya as a satrapy. The name passed into Greek as Kappadokia, into Latin as Cappadocia, and into Turkish as Kapadokya.

In ancient and medieval geography, Kapadokya referred to a larger region than the term covers today. Modern usage centers on Nevşehir province, specifically the valleys associated with the volcanic formations.

Nevşehir itself holds a story worth knowing. The city's older name was Muşkara, a small village in the Ürgüp district. In the 18th century, Muşkara was the birthplace of Nevşehirli Damat İbrahim Paşa, who rose to become Ottoman Grand Vizier under Sultan III. Ahmed during the Tulip Era. He returned to the village of his birth, expanded it, brought in new residents, established mosques, a medrese, and public buildings, and renamed it Nevşehir, meaning "new city." The prefix nev- comes from Persian and means new. It survives in several Turkish compound words: nevzuhur (newly appeared, upstart) and nev-i şahsına münhasır (unique, one of a kind, literally "exclusive to its own kind"). These compounds offer a glimpse into how Persian roots continue to function in formal and literary Turkish.

The landscape holds the sediment of multiple languages, much like the rock itself holds the sediment of multiple eruptions. Ürgüp comes from the Byzantine Greek Prokopion. Avanos was called Venessa in antiquity. Each place name is a layer.

Words to Carry with You

Peribacası is a compound noun: peri + baca + -sı, where -sı is the third-person singular possessive suffix. In the plural, the suffix changes: peribacası becomes peribacaları, following the pattern peri-baca-lar-ı. The singular -sı drops, replaced by the plural marker -lar and the possessive -ı. The same pattern applies to other compound nouns: deniz feneri (lighthouse) → deniz fenerleri, taş ocağı (quarry) → taş ocakları.

Baca (chimney) appears in expressions with nothing to do with fairies. "Bacadan duman çıkmak" (smoke rising from the chimney) means a household is alive and functioning. In Kapadokya, the chimneys rise for forty metres and belong to no one. The smoke was never part of the arrangement. The name kept the shape and released everything else.