Mazı(köy)
Little-known underground city
The sheer extent and sophistication of Cappadocia’s numerous underground warrens, with their multi-storey passages, chambers, facilities and security systems, amounts to a sobering reminder of what life must have been like for centuries on end across this contested region. If Cappadocia’s Byzantine priests and anchorites sought the solitude of their remote chapels that they might reflect there in times of peace, then entire populations habitually went troglodytic merely that they might survive whenever alarums sounded the imminent arrival of raiding Saracens, Persians, Tartars, Mongols or Turks.
Mazı, a scruffy farming village deep in the Cappadocian backcountry, is home to one of the less visited of these hollowed-out underground cities. That may change as there have recently been changes to the entrance and parking area, unwelcome in my view, but for now at least the site isn’t yet subject to the volume of coach tours which can clog more popular ones like Derinkuyu or Kaymaklı. On dark and airless corridors specifically designed with bottlenecks as protection against intruders, this is a serious consideration.
At Mazı guides lead the way down corridors and stairways of soft stone to chambers where the locals once lived and slept, to shrines, wineries, stables, kitchens and grain-grinding platforms. They point out the circular stones which could be rolled down their grooves to block off corridors at times of attack, and tell how the villagers used these interiors as storage space for their harvested crops until recent ones.
Then these villagers learned that modern visitors, a less fearsome crowd, might pay to be allowed access to them. The recent improvements indicate that Mazı means to establish itself on the tour circuit; the hope is it will only enjoy qualified success.
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