“There is no scene in the world as stunning as Cappadocia under snow,” said Ruth Lockwood, a businesswoman and textile expert who has lived in this central Anatolian region for 30 years. In this part of Turkey, wide plains abruptly descend into valleys teeming with fantastically shaped rock formations called “peri bacasi,” Turkish for “fairy chimney.” As Lockwood noted, “Days can be clear and sunny, and with the snow covering the fairy chimneys, it’s spectacular.”

When snow whitewashes the Cappadocian landscape, it evokes the lava belched from the region's three extinct volcanoes millions of years ago, inundating more than 1,500 square miles of the region. When the volcanic ash cooled, it formed tufa or tuff, a soft rock strikingly shaped and sculpted over time that over time by wind and natural erosion. Tufa is soft enough to carve, but hardens after exposure to air.

The history of Cappadocia is long and impressive. Tolga Uyar, an expert in medieval art, told Al-Monitor that people have inhabited the region for thousands of years, starting with “kingdoms or principalities in the [Early] Bronze Age in Anatolia around 2000 BC, when the Hittites and then the Assyrians came for commercial purposes.” The unique characteristics of the tufa allowed these early inhabitants to fashion dwellings in the fairy chimneys. They were followed by a long line of refugees, invaders and conquerors, from the Persians to the Ottomans. It was the Byzantine Christians, however, who left the most prominent legacy in the area. 

Uyar explained how the Christian presence in Cappadocia stemmed from religious conversions by early disciples throughout Asia Minor in the late Roman period, during the 1st and 2nd centuries. Monks chiseled out monastic cells; villagers created accommodations for cooking and sleeping, and farmers made livestock pens and pigeon coops. In the 7th century, the Islamic Empire extended to the Cappadocian frontier, subjecting the area to frequent Muslim incursions. For the next 200 years, whenever Arab invaders arrived, the Christians headed underground. Kaymakli and Derinkuyu are two of the most accessible underground cities where locals sought shelter.