Things to do
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Ortahisar
A working village built around a 90-metre rock castle riddled with rooms, called Sivrikaya locally and once a refuge from attackers. The castle can be climbed. Caves in the tuff below still store potatoes, apples and citrus fruit trucked up from southern Turkey, and many of the old stone houses have become small hotels.
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Sarıhan Caravanserai
Standing alone in the Damsa valley, about five kilometres southeast of Avanos and six north of Ürgüp, this Seljuk caravanserai of 1249 served the old Aksaray to Kayseri road. It is built of local tuff, was restored in 1991, and was among the last hans the Seljuk sultans commissioned. The stone portal is the part to see, and evening light suits it.
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Güray Museum
Twenty metres below ground at Avanos, this private museum of pottery opened in 2015 and traces Anatolian ceramics from the Copper Age to the Ottoman period in a star-shaped hall cut into the rock. A second hall shows modern Turkish ceramic artists. The working studio is on the visiting route, and visitors can try a potter's wheel.
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Kayakapi Premium Caves
A restored quarter of the old Ürgüp cave village, rebuilt house by house as a hotel with the original rooms and courtyards kept. It sits above the town with a view over the valley, and the main street with its carved stone facades is a walk downhill. It makes a quieter base than Göreme for touring the region.
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Mustafapaşa
Called Sinasos until its Greek population left in 1924, the town keeps some of the best carved stone architecture in Cappadocia, mansions paid for by traders who made money in Constantinople. The Church of Saints Constantine and Helena, with a vine carved around its door, stands in the centre and sometimes holds concerts, and Ürgüp lies five kilometres away.
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Sarıca Church
Buried in earth and nearly ruined until 1996, this rock-cut Byzantine church in the Pancarlık valley between Ortahisar and Mustafapaşa was restored between 1997 and 2002. Its plan, part Greek cross and part cloverleaf, matches the Dark and Apple churches at Göreme, and its decoration is painted in a single red-brown ochre. It is reached down a track and is usually empty.
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Three Beauties
Three capped fairy chimneys stand together above a viewing terrace on the Ürgüp side of the Nevşehir road. Each is a column of soft tuff kept upright by a harder cap of lava rock, the way the pinnacles across the region formed. Ten minutes is enough, and it fits easily into the drive between the two towns.
