Derinkuyu – The city that escaped the sun

Places that tell stories

Derinkuyu: the underground city that escaped the sun

August 21, 2025

In Türkiye, beneath the valleys of Cappadocia, lies a secret carved into the rock. It is believed that the first levels were created by the Phrygians in the 8th century BC.. Later, during the Byzantine period (5th–10th centuries AD), The city grew until it acquired the monumental form we know today.

Beneath those valleys, an entire city spirals down into the bowels of the earth, as if humanity had once tried to escape both the sun and the passage of history.

Architecture, life and strategy underground

Derinkuyu was not a makeshift refuge, but a city built to resist. Even twenty thousand people They could live there, along with animals and provisions. The kitchens still bear the soot from their fires; the storehouses and cisterns once held grain and water. The wine and oil presses stand silent, as if awaiting a new harvest.

In the deepest levels there were schools and chapels. Children learned to read while prayers echoed in cross-shaped rooms. Thus, the place became a human ecosystem in the shadows, capable of sustaining life for weeks or even months.

More than fifty ventilation shafts kept the air circulating. As a result, invisible currents seemed to breathe in sync with the community. When danger approached, enormous circular stones blocked the entrances. In this way, each level could be sealed off in an instant, leaving only silence and safety in the darkness.

Life didn't always take place underground. In times of peace, people returned to the surface to cultivate the land and live under the sky. However, in times of threat, they descended with only the essentials. In this way, Derinkuyu existed between two worlds: Above, the fragile light; below, the solid refuge of the stone.

The silence that breathes

Anyone who enters Derinkuyu today feels a strange presence. The silence isn't empty; it's profoundly human, as if each wall held memories that refuse to fade. It's an ancient murmur that clings to your skin.

The legend of the child without a sun

She had never seen the sun. Her world consisted of narrow tunnels, flickering lamps, and whispers that never rose too high, for fear of awakening something hidden in the stone.

Around it stretched meeting rooms, endless shafts, and passageways that branched out like veins in a living body. Everything was sealed, everything had its order.

However, there was one place that unsettled him: the ventilation duct. From there, sometimes, came a different air: the faint scent of the unknown.

One night, ignoring the warnings of the elders, he placed his palm against the wall. The stone was cold… and yet, it pulsed.

No one knows if that child ever existed or if he was just a vision born from dust and darkness. Even so, when one returns to the surface, one feels that something is following one from below.

A heartbeat. A call. A buried life that still waits.