4 Days Kayseri City Tour: Kultepe Kanesh, Soganli Valley & Turkish Cooking Class Private Tour

Highlights of the 4-Day Kayseri City Tour

Kayseri, the ancient Caesarea at the foot of snow-capped Mount Erciyes, is a city of dark volcanic stone, Seljuk monuments and lively bazaars that most travellers only pass through on their way to Cappadocia. This four-day stay turns it into the destination itself. After an easy arrival day you spend one full guided day among four thousand years of history, a second day learning to cook Turkish food with a professional chef, and leave on the fourth morning with a far deeper picture of Central Anatolia than a quick stopover could ever give.

The touring day starts 20 kilometres outside the city at Kultepe, the mound of ancient Kanesh. Here the remains of an Assyrian merchant colony, the karum, lie next to a great tumulus, and the clay tablets found on the site are counted among the oldest written records of Anatolia. Back in Kayseri you walk along the ramparts of the castle, first raised in the 3rd century and rebuilt in the 6th, before driving out to Soganli Valley with around fifty churches and dwellings carved into the rock. The day closes in the old centre with the Ulu Mosque, Gulluk Inn, the Hacikilic, Kursunlu and Kale mosques, a series of Seljuk vaulted tombs such as Cifte, Sircali and Sah Kutlu Hatun, and the mausoleums of Melik Mehmet Gazi and Seyyit Burhanettin.

On the third day a local restaurant opens its kitchen for you. Guided by the chef and your tour guide, you prepare a full menu of traditional dishes with salads and desserts, then sit down to eat what you have cooked; the rest of the afternoon is free. Three nights of hotel accommodation in Kayseri, daily breakfast, the cooking lunch, arrival and departure transfers, a professional English-speaking guide and the entrance fees mentioned in the programme are all arranged for you.