The Underground City of Derinkuyu
In 1963, a man renovating his house in Cappadocia knocked through a wall and found a tunnel leading to an underground city.
What was reported
In 1963, a resident of Derinkuyu in central Türkiye was renovating his home when he broke through a wall and found a hidden passage. It led into a vast underground city carved into the soft volcanic rock, reaching around 85 metres deep, with many levels.
The city has rooms for living, stables, chapels, wells, ventilation shafts and huge rolling stone doors that could be closed from the inside. It could shelter thousands of people and their animals.
Explanations offered
Historians think the tunnels were begun around the first millennium BCE and greatly expanded in Byzantine times, when local people needed refuge from raids. Cappadocia has many such underground cities. Its scale is astonishing, but it was clearly the work of people.
- When
- Rediscovered in 1963
- Where
- Derinkuyu, Nevşehir, Cappadocia, Türkiye
- Witnesses
- A homeowner, then archaeologists
- Status
- Explained
Famous cases are real, widely reported events. Each file sets out what witnesses said and the explanations that have been offered, without taking a side.