{"id":42866,"date":"2023-12-16T13:39:34","date_gmt":"2023-12-16T13:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pieroselvaggio.com\/?p=42866"},"modified":"2023-12-16T13:39:34","modified_gmt":"2023-12-16T13:39:34","slug":"the-giant-ancient-underground-city-now-a-ghost-town-where-20000-people-lived","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pieroselvaggio.com\/2023\/12\/16\/the-giant-ancient-underground-city-now-a-ghost-town-where-20000-people-lived\/","title":{"rendered":"The giant ancient underground city now a ghost town where 20,000 people lived"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Cappadocia is one of Turkey’s most beautiful regions, known for its distinctive “fairy chimneys”.<\/p>\n

Tall, cone-shaped rocks formed over millions of years of natural processes are clustered together in Monks Valley, G\u00f6reme and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there’s no denying the charm of Cappadocia’s landscape.<\/p>\n

But beauty isn’t only skin deep, and well below the region’s surface, one of the country’s most mysterious and impressive feats of engineering sits quietly and almost forgotten.<\/p>\n

Derinkuyu is an ancient multi-level underground city near the modern town of the same name, extending to a depth of some 280 feet, at its peak large enough to home tens of thousands of people.<\/p>\n

READ MORE <\/strong> Inside the ghost town that is attracting hunters of the supernatural<\/strong><\/p>\n

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They lived there with their livestock and food stores, meaning Derinkuyu is one of the largest underground complexes found anywhere in Turkey, and the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city itself could be closed from the inside with large rolling stone doors, and each floor could be closed off separately from the other.<\/p>\n

At its zenith, the city could accommodate up to 20,000 people and had facilities for its inhabitants found in other similar underground complexes in Cappadocia.<\/p>\n

Wine presses have been funded, as have oil presses and stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories and chapels.<\/p>\n

Unique to Derinkuyu is a complex located on the second floor of the city is a huge barrel-vaulted ceilinged room which was, it is thought, used as a religious school, with the adjoining rooms open for people to study.<\/p>\n

Its size and complexity is impressive, but what is even more awe-inspiring is the date on which historians believe work first began.<\/p>\n

The caves, they say, may have been built initially in the soft volcanic rock of the Cappadocia region by the Phrygians in the 8th to 7th centuries BC.<\/p>\n

Don’t miss… <\/strong>
Inside the world’s largest underground art gallery on a city’s entire Metro line[REPORT] <\/strong>
Mysterious hidden city buried 85m underground which housed whopping 20k people[LATEST] <\/strong>
The insanely impressive fully-functioning church that’s 600ft underground[INSIGHT] <\/strong><\/p>\n

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