Cappadocia offers visitors an opportunity to stay at extraordinary cave hotels

Cappadocia features one of the most stunning landscapes in the world. The famed Fairy Chimneys rise up out of the ground and give and the second you arrive, there's no way you can possibly imagine that you're living on the same planet as the one you arrived from. People in Cappadocia have been living either underground or in caves for literally centuries, right up until the present day. Derinkuyu is simply unbelievable. This underground city is 11 levels deep, has 600 entrances and miles and miles of tunnels connecting it with the 40 (!!!!!!) other underground cities you'll find in Cappadocia. It is more than just a place to sleep at night, with ventilation shafts, stables, wells, water tanks, pits for cooking, communal rooms, bathrooms and tombs. It's unknown exactly how old these tunnels are, with some archaeologists believing they date all the way back to the Hittites around 1,200 B.C. There are some who believe they're even older than that, but nobody knows for sure. Fast forward a few centuries, and once again cave home were being carved in Cappadocia. In the 18th and 19th centuries, hillside caves were carved into the Cappadocian rock, whose soft properties again made it ideal, and the regional stonework grew to a stylized nature. As one look can tell you, the rock of Cappadocia is unusual and this allows for beautiful archways and doors to be designed, with even art a typical feature of homes and dovecotes of this period. Now these old homes have been renovated and turned into cave hotels. You have all the luxuries of modern life – Flatscreen tvs, minibar etc, but set in the old homes, many times with the original artwork still on display. The stone nature of the buildings mean that they stay cool in the summers and warm in the winter, making it ideal. Many of the cave dwellings were built on hills overlooking Cappadocia, so you can even have a view of the stunning landscape from your original dwelling. Not a bad way to spend a holiday, is it?