Turkey’s underground city of 20,000 people

For 20,000 people, life below ground is their home. Located in the center of Turkey, the city of Istanbul is the largest underground city in the world. Built more than 1000 years ago, the city’s inhabitants live in a vast network of tunnels and caves.

What is the underground city of Istanbul?

20,000 people live in Turkey’s underground city.

The city, which is located 60 meters below the ground, was first discovered in 1974.

Since its discovery, the city has undergone several renovations and expansions.

Today, the city functions as a major tourist attraction.

The city is home to restaurants, shops, and hotels.

The city is also home to a hospital and a school.

The city has been nicknamed “Eskişehir UnderGround City”.

How was the city built?

In the remote and mountainous region of Turkey, a 20,000-person city exists deep underground. Known as the Underground City of Cappadocia, it is a fascinating and mysterious place that has been hidden from the public for centuries.

Built more than 2,000 years ago, the city was a refuge for the ruling class during times of unrest or danger. Today, it is a popular tourist destination, and visitors are able to explore its winding streets and beautiful Byzantine churches.

Despite its popularity, the city remains a mystery, and few people know about its existence. It is a hidden treasure that should not be missed, and anyone interested in exploring the world’s hidden places should visit the Underground City of Cappadocia.

What are the benefits of living in the underground city?

20,000 people live in Turkey’s underground city, according to reports. The city, which is located inside a coal mine, has been built since the 1970s and is one of the most inaccessible places on earth. The city has a population of miners, their families, and workers who support them.

Access to the city is controlled by the government and is only allowed to those who are employed by the mine or have a special permit. It is not open to the public and is only accessible by boat or helicopter. The city has its own hospitals, schools, and markets.

The city has its own government, police force, and banking system. It is also home to a nuclear power station. The city is one of the most isolated places on earth and is only accessible by boat or helicopter.

How does life is the underground city compare to life above ground?

20,000 people live in Turkey’s underground city, which has been built over the last 60 years to avoid the bombings during the country’s military coups. This city, located under the city of Istanbul, is made up of over 100 tunnels and has a population of just over 20,000 people.

The city was originally built to protect the military during coup attempts, but it has since become a popular tourist destination. It has a number of restaurants and shops, as well as a hospital and a school.

The city is also a popular place to live if you’re looking for a low-cost housing option.

Vicious blasts whipped free soil up high as I climbed through Cappadocia’s Adoration Valley. Pink-and yellow-tinted slopes hued the moving scene scarred with dark red gullies, and chimneystack rock developments lingered somewhere far off. It was bone-dry, hot, blustery and devastatingly wonderful. Centuries prior, this unstable, volcanic climate normally shaped the towers encompassing me into their cone shaped, mushroom-covered shapes, which presently attract a huge number of guests to climb or sight-seeing balloon in the focal Turkish locale.

Yet, underneath Cappadocia’s disintegrating surface, a wonder of similarly tremendous extents lay stowed away for a really long time; an underground city that could cover the whereabouts of up to 20,000 occupants for quite a long time at a time.

The old city of Elengubu, referred to the present time as Derinkuyu, tunnels more than 85m beneath the World’s surface, enveloping 18 degrees of passages. The biggest exhumed underground city on the planet, it was in close consistent use for millennia, changing hands from the Phrygians to the Persians to the Christians of the Byzantine Period. It was at long last deserted during the 1920s by the Cappadocian Greeks when they confronted rout during the Greco-Turkish conflict and escaped unexpectedly all at once to Greece. Not in the least do its cavern like rooms stretch on for many miles, yet it’s idea the in excess of 200 little, separate underground urban communities that have additionally been found in the locale might be associated with these passages, making an enormous underground organization.

As per my aide, Suleman, Derinkuyu was as it were “rediscovered” in 1963 by an unknown neighborhood who continued to lose his chickens. While he was revamping his home, the poultry would vanish into a little precipice made during the rebuild, gone forever. Upon closer examination and some digging, the Turk uncovered a dim way. It was the first of in excess of 600 doors found inside confidential homes prompting the subterrestrial city of Derinkuyu.

Exhuming started right away, uncovering a tangled organization of underground residences, dry food stockpiling, cows corrals, schools, wineries and, surprisingly, a church. It was a whole civilisation tucked securely underground. The cavern city was before long spelunked by great many Türkiye’s most un-claustrophobic vacationers and, in 1985, the district was added to the Unesco World Legacy list.

The city’s accurate date of development stays challenged, however Anabasis, composed by Xenophon of Athens around 370 BCE, is the most seasoned composed work that appears to reference Derinkuyu. In the book, he makes reference to Anatolian individuals, in or close to the district of Cappadocia, residing underground in exhumed homes as opposed to the more famous cliffside cave-abodes that are notable nearby.

As per Andrea De Giorgi, academic partner of old style learns at Florida State College, Cappadocia is remarkably fit to this sort of underground development because of the absence of water in the dirt and its pliant, effectively mouldable stone. “The geomorphology of the area is helpful for the digging of underground spaces,” he said, making sense of that the nearby tuff rock would have been genuinely simple to cut with straightforward instruments like digging tools and pickaxes. This equivalent pyroclastic material was normally manufactured into the fantasy chimney stacks and phallic towers extending from the earth over the ground.

In any case, whom to credit with Derinkuyu’s creation stays a fractional secret. The preparation for the rambling organization of underground caverns is frequently credited to the Hittites, “who might have exhumed the initial not many levels in the stone when they went under assault from the Phrygians around 1200 BCE”, as per A Bertini, a specialist in Mediterranean cavern homes, in his paper on local cavern engineering. Adding weight to this theory, Hittite ancient rarities were tracked down inside Derinkuyu.

Nonetheless, the main part of the city was logical worked by the Phrygians, exceptionally gifted Iron-age modelers who possessed the ability to develop elaborate underground offices. “The Phrygians were perhaps of Anatolia’s most conspicuous early domain,” made sense of De Giorgi. “They created across western Anatolia around the finish of the main thousand years BCE and had a twisted for monumentalising rock developments and making noteworthy stone cut veneers. However subtle, their realm spread to incorporate the vast majority of western and focal Anatolia, including the area of Derinkuyu.”

Initially, Derinkuyu was possible utilized for the capacity of merchandise, however its basic role was as an impermanent shelter from unfamiliar intruders, with Cappadocia seeing a steady transition of prevailing domains over time. “The progression of realms and their effect on the scenes of Anatolia make sense of the plan of action for underground safe houses like Derinkuyu,” De Giorgi made sense of. “It was at the hour of the [7th-Century] Islamic assaults [on the overwhelmingly Christian Byzantine Empire], nonetheless, that these homes were utilized without limit.” While the Phrygians, Persians and Seljuks, among others, all possessed the area and developed the underground city in ensuing hundreds of years, Derinkuyu’s populace expanded to its top during the Byzantine Time, with almost 20,000 occupants residing underground.

Today, you can encounter the nerve racking truth of life underground for only 60 Turkish lira (£2.80). As I dropped into the smelly, slender passages, the walls darkened with sediment from hundreds of years of light lighting, the new vibe of claustrophobia started to set in. Nonetheless, the creativity of the different realms that developed Derinkuyu before long became evident. Purposefully limited, short lobbies constrained guests to explore the maze of passageways and homes while tripped over and single document – clearly an untimely situation for interlopers. Faintly lit by lamplight, half-ton round stones impeded entryways between every one of the 18 levels and were just moveable from within. Little, completely circular openings in the focal point of these powerful entryways would have permitted occupants to stick trespassers while keeping a safe edge.

“Life underground was most likely extremely challenging,” my aide Suleman added. “The occupants assuage themselves in fixed earth containers, lived by torchlight and discarded dead bodies in [designated] regions.”

Each level of the city was painstakingly designed for explicit purposes. Animals was kept in pens closest to the surface to lessen the smell and poisonous gases created by dairy cattle, as well as give a warm layer of living protection for the cool months. The inward layers of the city contained abodes, basements, schools and meeting spaces. Recognizable by its novel barrel-vaulted roofs, a conventional Byzantine evangelist school, complete with nearby spaces for review, is situated on the subsequent floor. As per De Giorgi, “the proof for winemaking is grounded within the sight of basements, tanks for squeezing and amphoras [tall, two-took care of containers with a thin neck].” These specific rooms show that occupants of Derinkuyu were ready to go through months underneath the surface.