Kaymaklı Underground City

Enegup, the village built on its shelter

The ancient name was Enegup, to Cappadocian Greek speakers Anakou, and Wikipedia locates the city within the citadel of Kaymaklı, 19 km from Nevşehir on the Nevşehir–Niğde road. The village houses still stand around nearly one hundred tunnels of the underground city, and the tunnels are not only heritage: locals use them today as storage areas, stables and cellars, which is why the place reads lived-in rather than excavated. Of the 8 levels the state tourism portal counts, 4 are visitable, and the official wording is honest that only a fraction of the complex is open.

Widest, not deepest, and built around air

The layout is the decision-maker. Wikipedia's description has the tunnels running lower, narrower and more steeply inclined than Derinkuyu's, but every space is organised around ventilation shafts, so the rooms themselves are generous where the connecting passages pinch. HistoryHit goes further and calls Kaymaklı the widest underground city in existence, well-lit and spacious enough that visitors who dislike confined spaces tend to manage it, and it makes the practical point in plain words: it is not a terrible option for claustrophobes.

If Derinkuyu is a descent, Kaymaklı is a circuit with windows, which is why families and nervous first-timers often start here.

The same 1923 story, a different discovery date

The history rhymes with its neighbour's: possible Phrygian first caves in the 8th to 7th centuries BC, an underground city dated to the 8th century AD when Christians dug against invaders and bandits, expansion through the Arab–Byzantine wars, refuge in Timur's era, and abandonment in the 1923 population exchange. The two were even physically connected, by 8–9 km of tunnels neither site lets you walk. Kaymaklı's modern date differs by a year: it opened to tourists in 1964, which both Wikipedia and HistoryHit record, a year after the basement-wall discovery that woke Derinkuyu.

First floor: the stable and a millstone door

The visited route opens on the animal level. The stable sits on the first floor, and its small size is itself a clue: it suggests further stables in the sections not yet opened, since a refuge built for thousands needed more than one. To the left of the stable a passage closed by a millstone door leads into a church, and to the right lie rooms read as living spaces.

Livestock this high up is the same logic Derinkuyu used: keep the smell and the gases away from the levels below and borrow the animals' warmth in winter. It is also the floor where you set your pace, because everything above ground level you have already done by the time you are here.

Second floor: the church with two apses

The church on the second floor is the most explicit evidence of a community that expected to stay: a nave and two apses, a baptismal font in front of them, seating platforms along the walls. The names in the graves here coincide with those beside the church, which supports the reading that these were religious people buried at their workplace. Living spaces share the floor.

Practically, this is the widest chamber most visitors will stand in all day, and the moment claustrophobic readers should aim for: look at the ceiling height, then reconsider any worry you carried down the entrance stairs.

Third floor: granaries, presses and a copper workshop

Wikipedia calls the third floor the most important area of the compound: storage places, wine and oil presses, kitchens, and one genuinely strange object, a block of andesite with relief textures and fifty-seven carved holes, shown to have been used for cold-forming copper. The ore was probably mined in the country between Aksaray and Nevşehir, a source the much older settlement of Aşıklı Höyük had worked before them. A refuge city with an industrial floor is a refuge city planning on months, and the presses explain how.

This is the floor that rewards a guide or the history above, because nothing at the rope line labels the stone.

Fourth floor: the warehouses

The highest number of storage rooms and areas for earthenware jars sits on the fourth floor, and the quantity is the argument: Wikipedia reads the large storage area as evidence of economic stability, a community provisioned to outlast a siege rather than hide for a night. For the visitor it is the quietest stretch of the route, jar sockets and granary rooms in both directions. The descent ends here and climbs back through the same logic you came down by, which is worth knowing if someone in your party wants to stop at floor two: the circuit is forgiving of half-visits in a way the deep, one-way loops of Derinkuyu are not.

Four floors and a return climb make this a shorter visit than its neighbour, and the rooms are wide enough that the pace stays yours, not the queue's. Tour groups cycle through from mid-morning, which HistoryHit flags directly, and the evening opening means the emptiest slot of all costs you nothing but a late dinner.

Kaymaklı opens 08:00 to 20:00 every day, with the ticket office taking sales to 19:15 and no weekly closed day. In a region where the big sights shut between 18:45 and 19:00, that extra hour is a scheduling tool: a 17:00 arrival has the floors mostly to itself after the day tours leave, and in summer you surface into golden light instead of the mid-afternoon glare. The same religious-holiday rule applies as everywhere in the Ministry system, on the first day of Ramazan Bayramı and Kurban Bayramı the site opens only after midday.

The night session exists here too in the Ministry's evening-programme pattern, but the published evening ticket this guide's official sources carry is Derinkuyu's 19:00–21:00 session, so do not assume a ticketed night programme at Kaymaklı without checking the gate. On money, nothing to decide: the $14.90 (€13) gate ticket is the region's standard, and the MuseumPass Cappadocia e-card, $74.51 (€65) for 3 days with one entry per site, covers this gate like every other Ministry ticket in the region. The price and e-ticket detail for both cities is on the underground city tickets page. The official hours live on muze.gov.tr.

• Emptiest: after 17:00, once the day tours have gone north (our observation)
• Busiest: 10:00 to 13:00, when the tour circuit cycles through
• Last practical entry: by 19:00, for a fast 45 minutes below

By road, short from Nevşehir, half an hour-ish from Göreme

The city sits in the village of Kaymaklı, 19 km from Nevşehir on the Nevşehir–Niğde road, which makes it the underground city closest to the provincial capital rather than to Göreme. From Göreme the drive runs via or around Nevşehir, call it half an hour with the last kilometres climbing through the village's own streets, an estimate from the GPS distances rather than an official figure. The clean self-drive day is Kaymaklı first, then the north loop's Paşabağ and Avanos, or the double-underground day set out on the tickets page.

The day trips from Göreme hub sorts the variants.

By dolmuş through Nevşehir's otogar

Public transport works here better than the region's reputation suggests: HistoryHit's route is the one locals use, ride any Göreme–Nevşehir minibus to the otogar, find the central dolmuş stand, and board a service marked for Kaymaklı or the Derinkuyu cooperative, which drops you in the village centre. Departures run about every half hour through the day, from 07:30 to around 19:10 on that source's reading. The finding to plan around: no official fare table or timetable is published online for any of these rural lines, so carry small lira notes and confirm the last return at the otogar, not on your phone.

The regional picture is on getting around Cappadocia.

- The village still uses it. The houses of Kaymaklı stand around nearly one hundred tunnels, and locals use the tunnels today as storage areas, stables and cellars, which is why the place reads lived-in rather than excavated [Wikipedia, Description section]. - There was a factory on floor three. The andesite block with fifty-seven carved holes was used for cold-forming copper, probably from mines between Aksaray and Nevşehir that the Neolithic settlement of Aşıklı Höyük had worked thousands of years earlier [Wikipedia, Description section]. - The graves have names. The burials beside the second-floor church carry names matching those in the graves next to it, read as religious people buried at their own workplace [Wikipedia, Description section]. - It was tied to Derinkuyu by an umbilical. 8–9 km of tunnels connected the two cities, one system with two mouths, though no visitor today walks any of it [Wikipedia, History section]. - It opened before its famous neighbour. Kaymaklı admitted tourists in 1964, a year before Derinkuyu's 1965 opening on the state tourism portal's dating, which surprises everyone who assumed the deep one came first [Wikipedia lead and HistoryHit].

Kaymaklı wins two slots. The self-drive day: the two underground cities back to back, Derinkuyu at 08:00, Kaymaklı from 17:00 with the Ihlara gorge or a long lunch between, a shape the day trips from Göreme hub and the three-day Göreme itinerary both build around. And the slow evening: it is the only ticketed sight in the region with a ticket window open past 19:00, which rescues a day the balloons cancelled, and the Cappadocia balloon weather page explains why every itinerary needs one of those.

The things to do in Göreme list ranks the rest, the Göreme map pins it, and the Göreme city guide homepage holds the whole plan.