Now you can make that apophatic getaway you’ve always dreamed of. According to the International Herald Tribune, the Turkish region of Cappadocia — once home to Basil and the Gregorys — “is now going upscale and drawing a younger more sophisticated crowd.” But it’s drawing them into the very cells of the Fathers, now equipped with glass-walled showers and wifi.
I’m not making this up.
In April the area welcomed its first true designer hotel, the Serinn House, which has been built around and carved into the area’s soft rock like the subterranean chapels created centuries earlier…
As early as the third century, those chimneys became a hiding place for early Christians who fled persecution from the Romans, and then later from raiding Muslims. They dug deep into the rock, carving out underground cities that went eight stories below ground, as well as thousands of cave chapels and monastery cells.
[…] The Way of the Fathers notes that the ancient home of Sts Basil and the Gregories is gentrifying. […]
Well, that’s tacky.
It doesn’t seem to be at an abandoned monastery or anything; just in the same general area. There were lots of normal people living in the caves, also. (I did a Cappadocia “travel brochure” for a Girl Scout badge once….)
I like the hotel idea, and I’ve always wanted to stay in one of those Cappadocian holes-in-the-wall. But I’d hope that the furnishings would go along with the caves, not just be stuck into them.
I went and looked at the websites of a couple of the hotels mentioned. It looked like they’d built new buildings in front of the caves (for the lobby, hallways, and other amenities), and then turned the caves themselves into hotel rooms. They did seem to be pretty close to prime sightseeing areas of Cappadocia — one had nice pictures on their website of nearby underground cities and the “Dark Church” at Goreme.
Maureen: In all my years as a scoutmaster I never encountered a kid who would, even for a fraction of a second, consider producing a Cappadocian travel brochure for a merit badge. You are too cool, and apparently you always have been.
Maureen’s too cool for us, that’s definitely for sure.
I know “real” people lived there and all, but I think the spare oddity of the place is going to be really impacted by the appearance of hotel lobbies and Starbuckseses in every other cave. The natural gives way to the unnatural far too quickly when humans scent gold on the air.