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Cappadocia is a region of central Turkey famous for its strange soft rock, carved by wind and water into cones and valleys.
From the early centuries, Christians hollowed homes, chapels and whole underground cities into the stone, often to shelter from persecution. The Goreme valley holds dozens of rock churches painted with Byzantine frescoes.
Cappadocia was also the home of the great fourth century theologians known as the Cappadocian Fathers, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa.
Cappadocia is one of the great landscapes of early Christianity, where faith was carved into the rock itself.
Here Christians prayed in hidden churches, monks shaped the monastic life of the East, and some of the deepest thinking about the Trinity was done. Pilgrims come for the beauty of the painted caves and the sweep of the valleys, and for the sense of a church that endured, quietly, underground, for centuries.
What is Cappadocia known for? Cave churches and underground cities carved into soft rock.
Where is it? In central Turkey.
Who were the Cappadocian Fathers? Basil the Great and the two Gregories, great fourth century theologians.
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