6 Days Cappadocia, Mount Nemrut, Zeugma & Gobeklitepe Tour with Flights from Istanbul Group Tour

Please make your own way from your Istanbul hotel to the airport for the short flight to Kayseri, where your guide and driver meet you for the drive of about 45 minutes into Cappadocia. The tour opens at a panoramic point in Goreme looking over Pigeon Valley, the Rose and Red Valleys and the villages of Goreme and Uchisar. About half an hour later you descend into Kaymakli Underground City, a UNESCO-listed site famous for its well-organised network of rooms and passages, then stop at Pigeon Valley for views of Uchisar Castle. After lunch at a local restaurant in Avanos you watch a traditional kick-wheel pottery demonstration, then see the mushroom-shaped fairy chimneys of Pasabag (Monks Valley) and the unusual shapes of Devrent Valley, including the famous camel rock, before checking in to your cave hotel for the night.

Early risers can join an optional hot-air balloon flight at sunrise (not included). After breakfast you are collected from your hotel at 09:30 and walk through the Red and Rose Valleys, where dovecotes and rock-cut churches are carved into the soft tuff. Next comes Cavusin, an abandoned cliff village with wide views. After lunch you visit the Goreme Open Air Museum, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1985, whose rock-cut churches hold the finest preserved frescoes in Cappadocia. The day ends at a carpet cooperative, where young women weave carpets traditionally made for their dowry and you see each stage of hand-made Cappadocian carpet production. Overnight in Cappadocia.

After an early breakfast you set off on the long, scenic drive east to Kahta. In the afternoon you climb Mount Nemrut, crowning one of the high peaks of the Eastern Taurus range, to watch the sun go down over the sanctuary built by King Antiochus I of Commagene (69-34 BC). Five seated limestone figures, identified by inscriptions as Apollo, Tyche of Commagene, Zeus, Antiochus and Heracles, line the terraces, guarded at both ends by a lion and an eagle; their fallen heads now stand upright in front of the stone-chip mound, about 49 metres high and 152 metres across. You then drive on to Adiyaman for dinner and overnight.

After breakfast you travel to Gaziantep to explore the Zeugma Mosaic Museum, one of the largest museums of its kind in the world. Its floors come from the ancient settlements of Zeugma on the Euphrates, where around 2,500 square metres of mosaics were unearthed, and some scenes illustrate ancient literary works that have otherwise been lost. The collection also includes late antique church mosaics, Roman sculptures, columns and fountains, and the striking bronze statue of the war god Mars (Ares). Dinner and overnight in Gaziantep.

After breakfast a drive of about two and a half hours brings you to Sanliurfa and on to Gobeklitepe, considered the oldest religious structure ever found. Its carved stone pillars were raised around 10,000 BC, at the end of the last Ice Age, more than 6,000 years before Stonehenge and long before the rise of Sumer and the invention of writing. The site remained in use for nearly three millennia before it was abandoned some 9,000 years ago. Dinner and overnight in Sanliurfa.

After breakfast you are transferred to Sanliurfa airport for your included flight back to Istanbul, where the tour ends. We hope this journey from the valleys of Cappadocia to the oldest temple in the world stays with you for a long time.