The Claim
There’s an ancient underground city in Turkey capable of housing 20,000 people
Derinkuyu underground city is a massive network of tunnels and rooms that reach as far as 200 ft below the surface across 5 levels. The city is large enough to house 20,000 people as well as their food supplies and animals for short periods of up to several weeks.
The city can be sealed off from the outside world by rolling a series of large stone doors over the entrance which lock from inside. Each floor is also seal-able with its own stone door and was built to withstand anything a person could use to try and break in.
The city includes everything from temples and class rooms to wine pressing rooms and stables, with the lower levels containing the more important areas and a large cross shaped room acting as a church on the lowest level.
Derinkuyu was built some time between 780 and 1180 as there are records of the city being used to hide the local christian population from Muslim Arab tribes. It has been used to hide various populations from invading forces as recently as the late 1800’s when the local Cappadocian Greeks used it to hide from the various wars in the area.
One of the biggest questions raised about this underground city is why build it in the first place?. Its true the city was used to hide from various invading forces but normally such campaigns could last for years, and no where would be easier to lay siege to than an underground city. Surely all an invading force would have to do would be to set up camp outside the reasonably small single entrance and wait.
There is a 180 ft deep ventilation shaft that also appears to have doubled as a well for the inhabitants, which opened into a regular well on the surface. After securing the main door and dropping a few dead bodies down the well to contaminate the water, the people inside would be doomed, yet this situation never seemed to occur.
Later on the city was linked to a number of other underground cities with a network of tunnels, with the connecting tunnel to the city of Kaymakli being just over 5 miles.
Derinkuyu was abandoned in 1923 after the last christian inhabitants were expelled from Turkey, and they sealed up the tunnels on their way out, leaving them unknown to everyone else. They lay forgotten until a resident of the area found a strange room behind a wall in his house, and after some investigation found it led to the tunnel network.
The site was opened to the public in 1969 after a large amount of Byzantine artifacts were removed from the city and the tunnels made safe. Today about half of the city if open to the public for tours.
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