Cappadocia: 8 places to see, from Göreme to the underground cities

On each flying morning, around a hundred balloons take off before dawn from the fields around Göreme and drift for about an hour over the Love, Rose and Red valleys, between 100 and 800 metres up. Flights happen at sunrise because the valley winds are at their most stable; Turkey's civil aviation authority (SHGM) grants or refuses take-off permission every day, and a fair share of mornings are cancelled for wind.

Even without flying, the show can be watched from the hotel terraces in Göreme, Sunset Point above the village or the rim of Love Valley. Flights are booked with licensed operators, with a hotel shuttle at about 4.30am and a light breakfast before take-off.

A 1.5 km walk from the village, the Göreme Open Air Museum gathers the rock-cut churches and monasteries carved between the 10th and 12th centuries by the valley's monastic communities: Tokalı Kilise, the largest, the Apple Church (Elmalı), Saint Barbara, the Snake Church (Yılanlı), the Sandal Church (Çarıklı) and the Nuns' Monastery. Their Byzantine frescoes tell the life of Christ on a lapis-blue background, in varying states of preservation from chapel to chapel.

The Dark Church (Karanlık Kilise), whose frescoes are the best preserved on the site thanks to the lack of light, is visited with a separate ticket. The site, run by the Turkish Ministry of Culture and Tourism, is open daily from 8am to 6.45pm, with night opening from 7pm to 11pm; entry is charged and covered by the residents' Müze Kart. Allow 1.5 to 2 hours.

Carved into the tuff since antiquity and enlarged in Byzantine times as shelter from raids, the underground cities of Cappadocia are a maze of galleries, ventilation shafts, stables, wine presses and chapels. Derinkuyu, 30 km south of Göreme, goes down eight open levels to about 60 metres and could have sheltered thousands of people with their livestock; heavy millstone-shaped stone doors sealed the passages from inside.

Kaymaklı, 10 km further north, is wider and shallower, so easier to walk through. Both belong to the UNESCO property and are visited with a paid Ministry of Culture ticket; the green tours include one of them, usually Derinkuyu.

Visible from afar, Uçhisar Castle is a huge tuff outcrop, some sixty metres high, riddled with rooms, tunnels and dovecotes, which served as a fortified refuge and lookout. Perched at about 1,270 metres, it is the highest point in tourist Cappadocia: from the top, the panorama takes in the valleys, Göreme and, on a clear day, snow-capped Mount Erciyes.

The village of Uçhisar, 5 km from Göreme at the end of Pigeon Valley, has the region's finest cave hotels and plenty of terraces; it is also the start or end point of the Pigeon Valley walk.

Around Göreme, a network of eroded valleys can each be walked in half a day. Love Valley (Bağlıdere), to the north-west, lines up the tallest fairy chimneys in the region, up to 40 metres; Rose Valley (Güllüdere) and Red Valley (Kızılçukur), between Göreme and Çavuşin, owe their names to the pink and ochre tuff that blazes at sunset, with hidden rock churches such as the Church of the Cross and the Columned Church.

To the south, Pigeon Valley (Güvercinlik) links Göreme to Uçhisar in 4 km between cliffs pierced with dovecotes, and Devrent ('Imagination') Valley shows off its animal-shaped rocks. The trails are free to access and sparsely marked; the Red Valley viewpoints and Sunset Point are the evening meeting places.

Tucked into three valleys north of Göreme, the Zelve Open Air Museum was first a rock-cut monastic complex, then a cave village inhabited until 1952, when the risk of rockfalls forced its residents to leave. Opened as a museum in 1967, it is explored along a network of paths linking dwellings, mills, a mosque and chapels carved into the rock; wilder and less crowded than Göreme.

2 km away, the Paşabağ valley ('the pasha's vineyard') lines up the most photographed multi-headed fairy chimneys in Cappadocia, one of which holds the hermit chapel of Saint Simeon. The two sites form a single complex run by the Ministry of Culture, with a paid ticket.

Avanos, 12 km north of Göreme, stretches along the Kızılırmak, the 'Red River', Turkey's longest. Since Hittite times the river's red clay has been thrown here: pottery workshops fill the cellars and courtyards of the old town, and many offer a go at the potter's wheel, free and with no obligation to buy. The Güray ceramics museum, laid out underground, displays pieces from the Bronze Age to today.

The town is also known for its hand-knotted rugs and kilims, onyx and jewellery; a pedestrian suspension bridge crosses the river, and the banks make a pleasant late-afternoon stroll.

80 km south-west of Göreme, the Ihlara valley is a 14 km canyon, about a hundred metres deep, cut through the tuff by the Melendiz river at the foot of the Hasan volcano. Unlike the arid valleys of Göreme, it is green: poplars, gardens and a river that flows all year. Its walls hold around a hundred rock churches from the 6th to 13th centuries, a dozen of which can be visited (Ağaçaltı, Yılanlı, Sümbüllü, Kokar).

The trail follows the river from Ihlara village to Belisırma (4 km, where restaurants sit with their feet in the water), then on to Selime Monastery, carved into the cliff. The valley is entered by a 360-step staircase at Ihlara; the site is ticketed. Green tours spend most of the day here.