DEVRENT (IMAGINATION) VALLEY

This is a place to let your mind run free in a seemingly lunar landscape with rock formations that look like animals.

The Devrent Valley, also known as Imagination Valley or Rose Valley, has none of the cave churches, Byzantine frescoes or Roman citadel ruins that are famous throughout the rest of Cappadocia; but what it does have is an extraordinary landscape shaped by nature to make you laugh and wonder and explore.

Look: it's a camel!
Stunning Devrent Valley's volcanic cones are some of the best formed and most thickly clustered in Cappadocia, and looking at their fantastic shapes is like gazing at the clouds as a child. See if you can spot the dolphin, seals, and Napoleon’s hat, kissing birds, Virgin Mary and various reptilian forms.

Most of the rosy rock cones are topped by flattish, darker stones of harder rock that sheltered the cones from the rain until all the surrounding rock was eaten away, a process known as differential erosion but you can just call it kooky. 

♦ Underground City of Derinkuyu - the largest & deepest excavated subterranean city, which could house up to 20.000 people 
♦ Underground City of Kaymakli - the next largest excavated subterranean city, which could house up to 5.000 people 
♦ Göreme National Park & Open-air Museum - cave churches with frescoes 
♦ Zelve Valley & Open-air Museum - an empty cave town with churches 
♦ Paşabağ (Monk Valley) - mushroom-shaped fairy chimneys 
♦ Ihlara Valley - the deepest gorge of Anatolia 
♦ Devrent Valley (Imagination Valley) - animal-shaped fairy chimneys 
♦ Uchisar Castle - A rock-cut castle. You’ll see it driving back and forth 
♦ Ortahisar Castle - Troglodyte village with rock-cut castle 
♦ Sobessos -  The only late-Roman/early-Byzantine settlement found in Cappadocia, mosaic pavements, Roman baths 
♦ Avanos Town - Town of pottery & craftsmanship 
♦ Hacibektaş Town - Centre of Bektasi sect of Islam 
♦ Gülşehir Town - First settlements in Cappadocia 
♦ Caravanserais - Inns, «caravan palaces» on camel trains through Asia Minor