GÖREME · CAPPADOCIA
Where dawn fills the sky with balloons.
Hot-air balloons over the fairy chimneys, whole cities carved underground, cave churches painted a thousand years ago, and valleys you cross on foot, on horseback or by quad. This is Göreme, at the heart of Cappadocia.
Only in Cappadocia
Three things you can only do here.
Balloon rides, cave hotels and valley walks turn up in brochures everywhere. A sunrise flight over fairy chimneys, a city dug eight floors into the rock, and these valleys themselves do not.
Up before the sun
Dawn in a Balloon Basket
Cappadocia is the most-flown balloon site on earth, and once you have seen it you understand why. You lift off in the half-dark beside a few hundred other envelopes, climb until the fairy chimneys turn gold below, and drift over the valleys as the sun clears the ridge. An hour you do not forget.
- 1 Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride / Royal Balloon
- 2 Cappadocia: Goreme Hot Air Balloon Flight at Sunrise
- 3 Cappadocia Hot Air Balloon Ride/ Turquaz Balloons
Eight floors down
Cities Carved Downward
When raiders came, whole towns moved underground. Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı drop level after level into the soft rock, stables, kitchens, chapels, ventilation shafts and great rolling stone doors, deep enough to hide thousands. You climb down into them on the Green Tour.
- 1 Full Day Cappadocia Tour( Red Tour + Underground City )
- 2 Green Cappadocia Underground City and Valleys Tour. Lunch incl.
- 3 Cappadocia: Green Tour – Ihlara Valley & Underground City
Land of beautiful horses
Through the Valleys on Horseback
The old name for this region meant the land of beautiful horses, and it still fits. Ride out through Rose Valley and the Red Valley as the light drops, the way people have crossed this landscape for three thousand years. No engine, just hooves on the soft tuff.
- 1 Cappadocia: Horseback Riding Adventure Tour
- 2 Cappadocia: Horseback Tour with Sunrise and Sunset Options
- 3 Cappadocia: Horse Riding Tour with Sunrise or Sunset Options
The one everyone books
If you book only one thing, book this.
More travellers reserve this than anything else in Cappadocia. If you lock in a single experience before you fly, this is the safe place to start.
The classics
Cappadocia's Most Popular Tours
Dawn balloon flights, the Red and Green routes, quad runs through the valleys and the descent into the underground cities. The mornings most people book first.
Where to begin
The days a Cappadocia trip is built around.
Balloon flights, the Red and Green tour routes, quad and horseback rides through the valleys, the underground cities and the cave-restaurant nights. The handful of things most trips are planned around, and the best of each.
The big question
Red Tour or Green Tour?
Almost every Cappadocia day comes down to one of two classic routes. The Red Tour stays close to Göreme; the Green Tour heads south for the bigger distances. Here is what each one covers, and which to do first.
Engines in the dust
The valleys at full throttle.
When you have walked enough of them, ride. Quad and buggy convoys drop into Rose Valley, Love Valley and the Red Valley on the dirt tracks the coaches cannot reach, timed so you are up on the rim when the rock turns pink at sunset. Dusty, fast, and the most fun you will have between the fairy chimneys.
See the quad and buggy tours →On the Red River
Avanos and the potter's wheel.
North of Göreme the Kızılırmak, Turkey’s longest river, runs red with the clay that has made Avanos a pottery town since the Hittites. Sit at a kick-wheel in a cave workshop, throw a bowl from that same red earth, and watch a master shape pieces the way his grandfather did.
See the pottery workshops →First light
Five hundred balloons, one sunrise.
On a clear morning the valleys fill with colour before the sun is even up, hundreds of balloons rising together over Göreme, the most-photographed dawn in Turkey. Go up in one, or take a coffee out onto a cave-hotel terrace and watch the whole sky lift off.
Browse balloon flights →Painted in the rock
A thousand years of cave churches.
Cappadocia’s early Christians cut their churches straight into the tuff and painted the ceilings with saints and scenes that still glow. The Göreme Open-Air Museum gathers a dozen into one valley, and the Dark Church’s deep blues are the ones you will remember. Painted chapels hide across the region for anyone who keeps walking.
- 1 Cappadocia: Small-Group Red Tour, Open Air Museum with Lunch
- 2 Full-Day Tour in Cappadocia with Open Air Museum
- 3 Cappadocia: Red Tour (All Included) With Göreme Museum
After dark
When the music starts underground.
Cappadocia’s evenings go below ground too. In a cave hall a Mevlevi dervish turns in slow circles until his white skirt becomes a single spinning bell, a 700-year-old prayer, not a show. Other nights it is a cave-restaurant feast with folk dancers, the saz, and a glass of local Ürgüp wine. Either way, dinner is an event.
See all 99 evening experiences →By town
Pick your corner of Cappadocia.
Göreme for the cave hotels and the balloons overhead. Ürgüp for the wine and the boutique caves. Avanos for the pottery and the river. Uçhisar for the castle rock and the highest view. Each one is a different base for the same valleys.
By activity
Or pick how to spend the day.
Up in a balloon if it is the view you are after. On a quad or on horseback if you want the valleys. Underground for the hidden cities, behind a camera for the sunrise, and at a wheel in Avanos for the clay.
Plan it
Three perfect days in Cappadocia.
First time here? A short stay that puts you in the balloon basket, down an underground city and out across the valleys.
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