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KAYMAKLI UNDERGROUND CITY This the
widest underground city of Cappadocia region, it was carved out underneath
a rock hill (Kaymakli Castle). The first
three floors were probably carved out by Hittites about 2000 B.C. After that; Assyrians, Lycians,
Persians, Kimmerians settled down in the region. By the forth
century B.C. the world famous greek comander Alexander The Great occupied
the region and become dominant. In the year of 1000 B.C. Cappadocia
Kingdom was established. The kingdom made war against Mecodomans,
Galatians, Romans and Pontuses. The Romans
occupied the region in the beginning of the 1st. Century B.C. Roman empire
accepted Christian Religion in 376 A.D. Before that
romans didn’t have official religion, Eraly Christian suffered a lot from
the romans, Pagans and arab invaders. Therefore they refugied in the
Underground cities and they enlarged them. Kaymakli
Underground city was opened to the public in 1964. People of the town
built their houses around the underground city and they linked their
houses to the underground city with underground
tunnels. First floors
of the underground city served as stables for the domestic animals,
because upper floors were higher and convenient for this
use. On
the second floor a lying down blocking stone, some living rooms, cometery
and Christian Church are available. On the third
floor too many storage rooms, mill stone to make flour,
wineries to
make wine and wine cellars to store wine. In some of the wine cellars,
some of the broken wine jugs can be seen. On the forth
floor, there are some more wineries and grape storages. A long gallery
leads people to the communial kitchen, In the kitchen too many food
storage areas, ovens, a kind of hard stone which served multi functions,
such as morter, melting copper, barricade to block the passage to stop
enemies (bazalt or andezit stone). In the
underground city there are some main galleries and inside them same sub
division were carved out make the city very complicated to make the
enemies confused. There were
also some wide areas where some of the important matters were talked and
ceremanies were hold. The
ventilation shaft is vertical and passes all floors down like on the
elevator in an apartment. The depth of the ventilation shaft is abaut 120
meters in total. The underground city was originally carved out as eight floors, how ever four floors are visitable. In war time about 5000 people can refugied in. |