There are six modern towns in Cappadocia that offer good hotels, restaurants, and shopping. They are Göreme, Avanos, Çavışin, Ortahisar, Uçhisar, and Urgup. None of them has an airport, but Nevşehir, the nearby provincial capital, does. All of the major airports in Türkiye have flights to Nevşehir. You can book transportation to any of these towns through your hotel.
Here is the big custom Google Map.
Each town has a bus station or roadside bus stops providing hourly minibus service to the other towns, as well as taxis and taxi stands.
Göreme
Göreme, in the Nevşehir district of Nevşehir province, is the tourism capital of Cappadocia. Situated in the center of a network of valleys, it is a convenient base for exploring everything worth seeing in Cappadocia. Most of the best cave churches, hermitages, and monasteries are in and around Göreme, especially in the Göreme Open Air Museum.
Besides having plenty of hotels with rates for all budgets, it also has good restaurants serving traditional Turkish and international cuisine and shops where you can buy carpets, pottery, metalware, and souvenirs.
Göreme Open Air Museum
The Göreme Open Air Museum is the most visited site of the Christian monastic communities in Cappadocia. It contains more than 30 cave churches and chapels, with superb, vividly-colored frescoes on their walls and ceilings dating from the 9th to the 11th century AD.
Numerous hot-air balloon businesses in and around Göreme provide morning rides over the valleys and fairy chimneys.
How to Get to Göreme
From Nevşehir Airport
- Drive east on the Nevşehir Kappadokya Havaalanı Yolu (Nevşehir Cappadocia Airport Road) for 8.9 kilometers (5.53 miles) to Gülşehir.
- Turn left (north) and continue on the Nevşehir Kappadokya Havaalanı Yolu at the sign for Hacibektaş, Kırşehir, and Ankara.
- Drive 1.9 kilometers 1.2 miles. Turn left (north) at the traffic circle onto Highway D765. Cross the bridge over the Kızılırmak River.
- Turn right (East) at the sign for Avanos and Kayseri and go onto Avanos-Gülşehir Yolu.
- Drive 20.2 kilometers 12.6) to Avanos.
- Turn right (south) at the brown sign for Göreme. Crossing the Kızılırmak River, drive 5.1 kilometers (3.17 miles).
- Turn left (east) at the traffic circle onto Highway D300.
- Drive 1 kilometer (.62 miles).
- Turn right (south) at the traffic circle onto Göreme Yolu.
- Drive 6.7 kilometers, passing through Çavuşin, to Göreme.
Avanos
Avanos is a bustling town in the Nevşehir province of Cappadocia. It is the northernmost of Cappadocia’s places of interest. It is situated on the banks of the Kızlırmak, which, in Turkish, means “Red River.” The name refers to the river’s red clay, which has made Avanos a famous pottery center since Hittite times.
The river setting and its charming stone houses (on the north bank of the river) make Avanos a pleasant place to stay while exploring Cappadocia. It is a good alternative to Göreme.
Avanos Pottery
Avanos is world famous for its pottery. You can buy pottery with ancient Hittite designs and decorations and various other styles or have something custom-made. You can even watch the potters working on their traditional foot-powered spinning wheels.
Avanos Carpets
Avanos is also a carpet-weaving center. If you’re on a group tour, it will probably include a visit to a carpet-weaving center for a class and a demonstration of how carpets are made, from the extraction of silk from silkworm cocoons to their weaving on a loom. After that, you’ll go to a showroom where workers will throw their carpets onto the floor for you to inspect and, hopefully, buy! You can also visit a shop on your own and drink tea as the workers present their carpets for sale. Prices range from somewhat inexpensive wool carpets to very expensive (and very valuable) silk carpets.
How to Go to Avanos
From Nevşehir, take the D300 Kayseri-Nevşehir highway north of Nevşehir and drive 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) northeast to Avanos.
Çavuşin
Çavuşin is in the Avanos district of Nevşehir province in Cappadocia. It is five kilometers (3.1 miles) north of Göreme, on the Avanos/Göreme road. Çavuşin is not as popular as Avanos or Göreme, but it does have good hotels, a large cave-house complex, and two large cave churches, and it is a good base for exploring the nearby sites. It is just west of Zelve Valley.
Old Çavuşin
Eski Çavuşin (Old Çavuşin) was at the top of a high ridge, which provides spectacular views of the town and surrounding area, especially Zelve Valley. Because of rock slides, which caused a few deaths, the Turkish government moved the residents out of their cave houses to modern housing closer to the main road.
Ortahisar
Ortahisar, meaning “Middle Fortress,” is a 90-meter (295-foot) high rock formation and ancient city in the Ürgüp district of Nevşehir province. It is 4.6 kilometers ( 2.85 miles ) southeast of Göreme. For millennia, it was used to protect the local population from invaders. It provides a spectacular panoramic view of the area and Mount Erciyes in the distance.
Inside the Ortahisar complex are several ancient churches, a hospital, and a monastery. Around the fortress are ancient houses dug into the rock or made with bricks carved from volcanic tuff. Some have been converted into special-class boutique hotels.
There is also an ethnography museum with a restaurant serving traditional Turkish food. The museum has dioramas portraying traditional daily life with manikins in traditional clothing cooking, weaving carpets, and performing other daily tasks.
Uçhisar
Uçhisar, meaning “Outer Fortress,” is a 60-meter (197-foot) high natural rock tower in Nevşehir province’s Nevşehir district. It is the highest peak in Cappadocia. It provides amazing views of the town below, Pigeon Valley and other surrounding valleys, Göreme, and Mount Erciyes. Because of the view, it can get somewhat crowded, so go early in the morning to avoid the crowd. But it is just before sunset that the colors of the area’s rock formations, valleys, and fairy chimneys are most vibrant.
The rock tower has numerous rooms dug into it, interconnected by tunnels and stairways. Many now serve as cafes, restaurants, and shops selling ceramics, jewelry, handicrafts, and souvenirs. The main underground bazaar has more shops. It is open from 9:00 AM to 8:00 PM. Allow at least two hours for a visit.
Urgup
Urgup is in Nevşehir province, 9.2 kilometers (5.7 miles) east of Göreme. Because of its central location, Urgup is an excellent base for visiting the sites of Cappadocia and a good alternative to Göreme. It is a small but bustling town with numerous boutique cave hotels, restaurants, cafes, bars, a large shopping center, a museum, and a winery.
The Three Beauties Fairy Chimneys
These fairy chimneys are among Cappadocia’s most beautiful and photographed. They are 900 meters (.55 miles) west of the main roundabout intersection on the north side of Highway D302. If you’re coming to Urgup from Göreme, you will see them just before you enter the town.
Temeni Tepesi
Temeni Tepesi is an 80-meter (262-foot) high rock formation with 30-meter (98-foot) high sheer cliffs on the city’s western outskirts near Highway D302. It is populated and surrounded by old stone houses and boutique cave hotels and provides an excellent view of Ürgüp and the surrounding area, including Mount Erciyes. The best view is at sunset on a viewing terrace accessed by a 90-meter (30-foot) long tunnel.
Ürgüp Museum
The Ürgüp Museum is on the north side of Atatürk Bulvarı, just east of Temeni Tepesi. It displays archaeological finds from the town and surrounding areas from prehistory, statues and figurines, lamps, stelae, ceramics, and metal and glass objects from the Hittite, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine periods.
Ürgüp Pazarı (Bazaar)
The Ürgüp Bazaar is on the east side of Ahmet Asım Yolaç Caddesi (Boulevard) in the south of Ürgüp, next to the Akduman AVM (shopping center). There, you can buy carpets, pottery, jewelry, and souvenirs
Tursan Winery
Tursan Winery produces some 60 percent of Cappadocia’s wines. It is located on the west side of Ürgüp, on the north side of Tevfik Fikret Caddesi, on Highway D302. The winery offers free tours and wine tastings in its rock-cut wine cellar.
Ken Grubb
I’m a retired US military investigator and crime scene specialist who has lived in Türkiye for over twenty years. I love learning about and investigating Türkiye’s ancient Christian sites. My archaeologist friends tell me that my old job is much like theirs!
