Cappadocia, a province in central Turkey, offers the traveler a startling rockscape whose cones, pleats, and folds conceal hundreds of monasteries and churches carved from the soft, porous "tuff" and used by Christian communities over nearly two millennia for shelter, burial, and sanctuary. This region in the Turkish hinterland is recognized as one of the centers of Byzantine mural painting. However, numerous hermitages, monasteries, and independent chapels dating from the seventh century onward reveal it also as one of the most concentrated areas of Eastern monasticism.
