Uchisar Castle

The view from Uchisar Fortress offers a magnificent panorama of Cappadocia and Mount Erciyes, located 80 km. Away. There is an old cave inside the fortress, and the houses of Uchisar rest against the outskirts of it.

UCHISAR CASTLE TURKEY
Uchisar is located on the Nevsehir-Goreme road, just 5 kilometers from Goreme, and it is the highest point in all of Cappadocia. The view from the top of Uchisar Castle is spectacular, taking in the surrounding landscape and Mount Erciyes in the distance.

There are numerous rooms carved out of the rock, all linked together by stairs, tunnels, and passageways. Millstone doors, similar to those used to restrict entry to underground communities, stand at the rooms’ entrances. Parts of this multi-story castle have eroded, making it impossible to access all of the rooms within. The majority of the rooms on the castle’s northern side are currently being used as pigeon houses (dovecots). Farmers would use these underground pigeon coops to store pigeon droppings, which are great organic fertilizers for fruit trees and vineyards.

Pigeon Valley (Guvercinlik Vadisi in Turkish), which links Uchisar and Goreme, is home to many more pigeon houses. Most of the people who live in these caves have painted their homes white to attract birds, which leaves them food and things to build nests with.

The Romans dug into the fairy chimneys to the west, east, and north of Uchisar and used them as burial sites. The lines, or stone slabs, on which the deceased were laid can be found inside these rock-cut tombs, the entrances to which typically face west.
Within and around the walls of the castle, numerous rock-cut churches have been uncovered. Perhaps this is due to the proximity of Goreme, with its many religious buildings, to Uchisar.

The eroded and plundered Byzantine graves atop the castle are uninteresting in their simplicity. Long defense tunnels reportedly extended far into the surrounding areas in towns with citadels like Uchisar, Ortahisar, and Urgup (Bashisar). This is a common belief, but it is based on an unproven theory because the tunnels have collapsed in some places and the distances they supposedly travel are unknown.