There are many wonders in the Cappadocia valley, because this place itself is unique and amazing. It was formed due to the eruption of the huge volcanoes Erciyes, Hasan and partly Güllüdağ about 2-3 million years ago. At the moment, thank God, they are not active, but... Just look at the area covered by all those eruptions, and it did not bring much good. Of course, we now have an incredible tourist attraction, and many different things happened from this phenomenon. But imagine how many deaths these volcanoes caused, the diameter of all the phenomena caused by volcanoes reached 150-200 km, which also concerns poisonous gas, and it is also described that the smoke from Erciyes reached as far as Pastelina. And so, since the diameter of the eruptions was large, there are many places in Cappadocia that can be explored and explored. And this time we visited a truly unique place that is fascinating. For this visit, we settled in an apartment in Aksaray, and immediately the next day we headed to our destination.
In Cappadocia there are many such mounds in the middle of which there are clear windows, "doors" shelves and much more, most of them are not recognized as anything special or anything, so they are like open museums. They have free access without paying where you can walk freely. By the way, it was very fun to visit such places and climb into different caves and climb on top of the rocks, even though sometimes it seemed to me that I was standing near someone's tomb in a cave high in the rock, because there was a clearly marked square place with a cross above. But still, it was fun to run there and climb. But this time we found something that really stood out. Arriving right at the entrance, we noticed that it was starting to drizzle a little. Standing under the drops, we bought our museum cards again, because we hadn't visited anything where they needed to be used for quite some time, and went to explore before the downpour started!
And so we are greeted by the Selime Castle (Selime Kale, a monastery actually). This is an incredible place where monks settled( lived, prayed and etc). This is an incredible place here, and in a Muslim country where monasteries are prohibited. The thing is that this monastery was carved from soft lava material, founded back in the days of the Byzantine Empire itself. Imagine how long ago it was, about 800-900 years. When the world was Christian.
Walking up the (cooled down) lava stairs, rain drops were falling down. The weather was not very pleasant for taking photos, but we were still enjoying the landscape. It was kind of problematic to take photos when water was falling on the screen of my phone, but I was still managing, even though some of them are blurry because of water on the camera. I was amazed by how big the castle-monastery was. In the back of the first and second floors of the construction, we see a big and high wall of the main cliff. İt is so enormous, i can't even imagine how it formed! Up on the cliff, high above the places where tourists are walking, inside of it, there's a bunch of "windows" which once could be also the rooms where people lived. I'm not very sure, that's just my assumption, but looking at those, you can clearly see rooms. I assume, as i read, because of the erosion and destruction, the outside walls were broken, and that's why we see the room inside. And because of the same reasons i guess, now all of the inside system, by which monks were walking all the way up there was also destroyed sadly.
İ dont know if the guide was telling anything about those rooms, but i guess no one was able to discover those parts of monastery.
At the very entrance there are some big humps, inside which there are rooms. The humps are placed on a nice carpet of grass and pretty pink flowers, the photo of which I'll show in the end. After the hump, going around it, there are stairs which were carved out by the people who made this a tourist attraction.
We were going up and up, and we were noticing how complex construction was more and more. It was created so sneakily for a reason!
Nowadays, everyone knows about the incredible monasteries of Cappadocia, you can find information about them on the Internet or buy a tour. But they were created to be unnoticed, on a difficult-to-reach surface. And all in order to hide. Of course, the original purpose of this place was for prayers, and for life dedicated to service. But changing conditions force you to adapt. In general, this monastery dates back to the 8th-9th century, the time of Byzantium, and the religion of Christianity. And there is a huge difference between the modern religion of the country and Christianity, in a lot of things like type of thinking, tradition and etc.
In this post I will not retell all the differences between Christianity and Islam, of course, as I like (too complex and controversial a topic), but let me tell you about the one that relates to the theme of the monument of our post. So, the difference that I learned about while reading about this place is that — I know, in Christianity, these kinds of castles are widespread, life in them, and spending your whole life in solitude. I was born in Ukraine, where the main religion is Christianity, and while living there I saw many monasteries, and also monks and nuns. In Islam, everything is completely the opposite. Life in monasteries and seclusion is strictly prohibited, because there it is mandatory to get married. And therefore, in those days life was more difficult than now. The country was surrounded every day by dangers from other countries and attacks.
Climbing up was extremely interesting, there was a lot of interesting turns and landscapes. Also the arrows on hills made the place look like it was a video game. Going up we had to go through this interesting tunnel ⬇️
Inside the tunnel there was this "window" view which showed one of the mounds, and the photo turned out actually cool ⬇️
One of the biggest problems of Byzantium in those days was the attacks of the Arabs. They didn't really wanna make the people Muslim, but the conditions for the Christian people who lived there weren't very pleasant either. Every year they made attacks to Byzantine cities to plunder them, weaken Byzantium, take prisoners, having great pressure on the country, and on non-Muslim residents. And so during those times, Christians in monasteries who simply refused to accept the new Muslim rules, and loved their emperor, figured out how to defend themselves.
Beautiful view of the Selime village from the Selime monastery ⬇️
They began to create inconspicuous shelters for themselves, and lava rocks were an ideal place. The soft material made it easy to carve entire rooms inside the rocks.
But the Selime Castle, was not sane as all other monasteries, it was a Castle, where a lot of other people besides monks were living. It was an entire fortress! The confusing labyrinths were a perfect strategy for the tought times, so the enemies don't find them! The rocks were the perfect place to settle at because they were perfectly camouflaged from the outside environment.
You ask, camouflaged, you mean? They are so open, a lot of windows, it's hard not to notice them!
And I'll tell you - no, because everything was completely different in those days! To begin with, the main entrance was not where all the tourists go now. Where the entrance is now - was actually a central courtyard, where the walls used to be higher and sharper, and the stairs that are now are even more. The real one was on the other side, where there is an absolute cliff, where the monks climbed the ladder. Also, all the now open entrances to the rooms that you see were previously absolutely covered, because there were walls, and now there's no because of the erosion.
I could not believe in that information about ladder entrance at all at first, because have you seen how that cliff looks? And so it may be false, because i was very confused and asked chat gpt about it, so right now I'm telling about the entrance system to you from chat gpts words.
The courtyard ⬇️
İn some places there were even things so narrow that we had to climb under! 😀⬇️
When we finnaly made it to the uppest floor of the monastery, the courtyard where everyone lived, and i was amazed. So many detailed rooms, different systems. There was also a dog wandering around and keeping a company all the tourists. How did it even got there?
⬇️ The first room we visited was a separated from the general wall mound, which was just simply called "Room". What an original name i thought. İnside there were two parts separated, and the way to the second part was through these small and narrow stairs, where you had to even bend to actually enter the other part!
I think it was an observation deck for the big mounds which are standing down on the ground, and maybe that was the place where horses might have been overfed. Perfect place because you cant really take them up here, and inside the big mounds they could have carved them rooms and put food for them.
The scenery of the big mounds is truly beautiful, i love how the gray orange-ish colour of the material collides with the grass colour. To be honest, i don't even know how were these mounds made, but that's such a unique habitat now, where we're able to walk.
Millions of years passed, and a lot of changes were made, and it would be so interesting for me to see the stages of forming. Sometimes i even think that those mounds were once immersed in a large body of water, because some of them have this specific shape like if they were washed out on the sides.
(Me and this fantastic view)⬇️
The next room we headed to was the monastery. I really regret that we didn't take a guide. I can't fully understand what was what now! But we didn't have much time, and wanted to take a look at everything quickly, so that's why.
Usually a big place where monks live is called a monastery, but probably because a lot of people besides monks lived there it's called a castle and a fortress instead. I was very confused with this room, and even on internet i couldn't properly find much information. But from my assumptions this room was a living place for monks, where they actually slept. I also heard when i was passing a guide that on the upper part of the monastery room were sleeping woman and on bottom man. Since the place was small, probably all monks were living together.
And so the next room was Mutfak, which is "kitchen" from Turkish.
Here I saw a very interesting system of extract. The roof was carved in a specific quadratic way, and in the highest point there was a small hole. Inside there were shelves where products were probably put, and a tabletop. Also after the kitchen we could see a separate room with tons of shelves, i guess it was a storage room.
It was written that here was a "Grain store" ⬇️
I guess grain was the perfect food to have in those conditions, not getting spoiled fastly, if keeped in dry places, and easy to prepare.
There was a lot of small bridges that blend well with the atmosphere, but were also very slippery. We explored the place more and more. The views are simply incredible.
Exploring inside the caves there was a lit of different narrow trails. We hardly fit inside those! In some rooms there were also tunnels, which led to a different room. The moving system was so interesting, inside it was pitch black dark, it was at first scary to go inside but then with all my braveness I went first (haha, just kidding, it wasn't that scary, but my mom 
Video ⬇️
My POV ⬆️
My sister's POV 😀⬆️
And so the next room we visited was Chapel
As i read this is a place with a few separate "sections" where monks could pray by themselves ⬇️
I took a photo of this nice asian girl pointing while her boyfriend was taking a photo of her 😀
Her yellow outfit really suits the landscape, and it turned out like a nice photo ⬇️
And now we are heading to the cathedral, where all the people performed divine services and their daily liturgy. The neat carvings in this room are simply incredible. I’m amazed that even in such conditions people didn’t forget about aesthetics. I've also noticed the beatiful drawings of Jesus Christ, and other drawings on ceiling almost completely erased over time. I don't really know what was drawn on the ceiling, but there's a lit of faces! Also the walls inside the cathedral are completely different — instead of a beige shade, they are pitch-black. Also one interesting detail i noticed again staring at all the photos is that theres a lot if these ♠️ on the walls. Which is very weird (i don't know the meaning behind it) because when i was attending classes before the first confession, the priest told me and other children "kids, don't play with cards, because there are unholy symbols, which are agains Christ". And now i see these at the ancient cathedral!?
The cathedral from outside ⬆️
Inside ⬇️
Again amazing contrasts of the monastery in rainy weather ✨✨🌱⬇️
And the neeeeext place we headed to was the Church. The carvings here were even more delicate, and the walls were also black. And this place was designated for specifically monks, since they needed to visit the church a few times a day, and the cathedral was for all people, so they will visit only once or something (not sure?)
Also standing and exploring the church, there was also a guide standing by us with other tourists, and we came at the exact moment when he was demonstrating how the sound in the church worked during the liturgy. And that was the most fantastic moment, out of nowhere the guide sang the most amazing sound I've heard. It was like in an opera and I don't know how it works but the church room did exactly what it was supposed to and the sound was really magical, it's like i was blessed that i heard it. Literally the best guide ever 🤩.
Outside of church ⬇️
Inside ⬇️
Cool narrow descent in case someone didn't wanna go all the way around to go down (which we chose because we were in a rush) ⬇️
And so going down we were enjoying the delighful sneaky turns again. It actually felt like a whole labyrinth when walking there!
So here are the photos I said about on the beginning of my article, and it literally looks so majestic 🥹🌸🌸🌸🌱
⬇️
(What are these houses mixed with mounds..???Goshhh... I'd have to read another paragraph to find out, but this post would take even longer if i do, so do that yourself okay???)
When we walked down to the entrance of the monastery-castle, we decided to also take a look at those landscapes we saw from the "Room" room — the horse "parking" area 😂. Here we can clearly imagine how horses were living there. Really a great place, and there are a bunch of similar to "stables" holes, with also shelves for hay or grain.
Some of the photos in this post were taken from my sisters article, because I didn't take enough, because of my storage. 😫
So here my exploration of selime comes to an end because we had to hurry to other places! I hope you enjoyed it!
Bye bye everyone! 🌸⛪🌱✨🌄