Pasabag (Monks Valley)

One ticket, around €12 for foreign visitors, gets you into Pasabag as well as the Zelve Open Air Museum, roughly a kilometre apart. No other spot in Cappadocia has fairy chimneys quite this striking: high cones of soft tuff, several of them forking into two or three stems, every one topped by a dark cap of tougher rock. It is a compact site that you can cover on foot in 45 minutes.

At a glance

How the rock columns were made

Millions of years ago Mount Erciyes and other volcanoes buried the area under deep ash. It set into soft tuff, capped by tougher basalt and ignimbrite. Wind and rain eroded the soft stone faster than the caps, so columns survived under their stone hats. Here the columns grow unusually high, and many divide into multiple heads. Locals once named it the valley of priests for that reason; later it took the name Pasabag, after a pasha whose vineyards these were.

Hermits in the rock

Starting in the early Christian centuries, hermits made their homes in cells carved into the chimneys. The most famous is a chimney with three heads and a chapel for St Simeon the Stylite. That Syrian saint spent decades living on a pillar top, and the local hermits copied him by making their homes high up in the stone. Visitors may climb up into the chapel and look at the cell cut above it; expect steep stairs.

Sights

• St Simeon's chimney, near the centre, with its chapel at the bottom.
• Mushroom chimneys, the picture everyone takes in Cappadocia, best framed from the path on the eastern side.
• Cells of the hermits, cut with niches and sleeping benches.
• Zelve Open Air Museum, the neighbouring site: a monastery and village carved across three valleys and lived in up to the 1950s, by which time erosion had made it unsafe.

When to go

Arrive early in the morning or after 16:00. Every Red Tour stops at Pasabag, so groups fill it from late morning into the early afternoon. Late-afternoon sun throws long shadows and warms the colour of the rock. In spring there is green grass and fruit trees in blossom. Summer means little shade, so wear a hat.

Our guided Red Tour with lunch spends six hours on Love Valley, Devrent Valley, Pasabag, Zelve and the potters of Avanos, with lunch and pick-up at your Cappadocia hotel; prices start at US$60. If you are based in Istanbul, the two-day Cappadocia trip with flights includes both the Red and the Green Tours and a hotel night, while the private Cappadocia highlights day can fit in Pasabag with a guide of your own.

Tips

• Hold on to your ticket; Zelve asks for it later that day.
• At the entrance, stalls sell gözleme (a thin filled flatbread cooked on a griddle), dried fruit and local wine.
• Inside the St Simeon chimney the chapel steps are steep and worn smooth. Be careful going down.
• Stay on the marked paths and off the chimneys; the tuff breaks easily.
• A short drive away, Devrent Valley has free roadside chimneys shaped like animals, one of them resembling a camel.

Pasabag versus Zelve

Pasabag is about form. Come here for photos of mushroom-capped chimneys, and expect to spend under an hour. Zelve is about the people who lived here. Across three valleys lies a whole deserted village cut into the cliffs: homes, churches, a mosque, a monastery and a mill. The walk is longer and includes some climbing. Because the rock was collapsing, families were resettled during the 1950s in a newly built village nearby, and parts of Zelve are now fenced. With time for only one, go for Pasabag and its scenery. To see how life inside the rock worked, add Zelve on the same ticket.

Our Cappadocia destination page covers the rest of the region.

Frequently Asked Questions