In 1963, a local Turkish man was doing some standard home renovations on his house. He knocked down a wall in his basement cellar and to his amazement, noticed a dark, narrow passage leading into the rock.
Curious, he crawled inside. He didn’t just find a hidden room—he found a gateway into a sprawling, multi-level subterranean metropolis that had been completely forgotten by the outside world.
The city spent centuries acting as a secret hiding place. From the time it was built thousands of years ago, all the way through the Middle Ages, people would run downstairs and hide whenever enemy armies invaded.
For centuries, those armies would march right over the city, completely fooled by the hidden entrances.
When archaeologists arrived, they were stunned. The city was not just a cave; it was an incredibly complex engineering marvel carved straight out of soft volcanic rock.
The city plunges roughly 280 feet into the earth, and it was large enough to comfortably shelter 20,000 people at the same time.
The first and second levels contained stables with stone mangers to hold horses, cows, and goats.
Deeper down, researchers found living quarters, massive food kitchens, communal dining rooms, olive presses, and vast wine cellars.
On the second floor, there is a large room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling that was used as a Christian theological school.
A brilliant 180-foot central ventilation shaft brought fresh oxygen down to the deepest rooms. It also acted as a well, supplying the underground citizens with clean drinking water without them ever having to go outside.
The tunnels were originally started thousands of years ago by ancient cultures like the Phrygians or Hittites.
Whenever danger approached, entire towns on the surface would pack up their families and animals, vanish into the ground, roll the half-ton stone doors shut, and wait out the invasion in total silence.
The city was actively used for centuries. However, in 1923, a massive population exchange occurred between Greece and Turkey.
The Christian Greeks who knew about the tunnels were forced to relocate, and the secret of the city was lost. The tunnels sat in pitch-black silence until that lucky homeowner picked up a hammer 40 years later.
Derinkuyu is now recognized as one of the most remarkable feats of ancient engineering ever discovered, and it remains open for visitors to explore today.