Cappadocia travel guide

Top 10 sights in Cappadocia

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© PaestumPaestum · CC BY 4.0

   Alba Fucens

   A Roman colony founded in 303 BC at a thousand metres below Monte Velino, used as a prison for defeated foreign kings — Perseus of Macedon among them. Its forum, basilica, baths and amphitheatre are laid out in open fields with almost no visitors.

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2. 

   2© Marica Massaro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Avezzano Cathedral

   The cathedral of Avezzano in the Abruzzo, dedicated to St Bartholomew. The earthquake of January 1915 destroyed the town and killed some thirty thousand people in the region; the cathedral was rebuilt in the 1940s and the diocese seat moved here.

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3. 

   3© Marica Massaro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Tunnels of Claudius

   A drainage tunnel five and a half kilometres long that the emperor Claudius had cut through the mountain by AD 52, using a reported thirty thousand workers over eleven years, to lower Lake Fucino. It was the largest Roman engineering work of its kind and parts can be entered.

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4. 

   4© Giulio Bertolaccini · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Church of Saint Mary in Valle Porclaneta

   A Romanesque church of the twelfth century at Rosciolo, whose interior holds a marble pulpit and carved chancel screen — the finest medieval sculpture in the Abruzzo, made by local masons and signed by them.

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5. 

   5© Pietro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Abbey of Santa Maria della Vittoria

   A Cistercian abbey founded by Charles of Anjou after his victory at Tagliacozzo in 1268, the battle that ended Hohenstaufen rule in Italy. The monastery was abandoned and quarried; only fragments and the ground plan remain.

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6. 

   6© Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Orsini-Colonna Castle

   A castle in the middle of Avezzano, built by the Orsini in the fifteenth century and turned into a residence by the Colonna in the sixteenth. The 1915 earthquake brought most of it down; the walls were consolidated and the interior now holds exhibitions.

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7. 

   7© Pietro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Rocca Orsini

   A thirteenth-century castle on the hill above Scurcola Marsicana, used as the Angevin camp before the battle of Tagliacozzo in 1268. Its tower and curtain wall survive above the village.

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8. 

   8© Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Cathedral Basilica of St. Scholastica

   The oldest Benedictine house still standing, founded in the 6th century in the gorge below Subiaco. Three cloisters of different ages open one into the next, and the first books printed in Italy came off a press set up here by German monks in 1465.

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9. 

   9© Marica Massaro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Altolaterra

   The old upper quarter of Tagliacozzo, a knot of stepped lanes on the hillside with a medieval gate and noble houses still standing. The town below has a fourteenth-century square that is one of the best in central Italy.

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10. 

    10© High Contrast · CC BY 3.0 de

    Monastery of Saint Benedict

    The monastery built over the cave where Benedict lived three years as a hermit, clinging to the cliff on nine arches above the Aniene. Its walls carry frescoes of the 13th and 14th centuries, among them a portrait of St Francis painted within his own lifetime.

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1. 

   1© Marica Massaro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Fucine Inlet

   The head of the outlet channel that drained Lake Fucino, where the Roman tunnel's intake was rebuilt in the nineteenth century when a Neapolitan banker finally emptied the lake for farmland. The monumental gates and sluices stand in the fields.

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2. 

   2© Marica Massaro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Castello Orsini

   An Orsini castle on the hill at Massa d'Albe, with the Roman ruins of Alba Fucens on the slope below it — so the same short walk covers a Roman colony and the medieval fortress built from its stone.

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3. 

   3© Livioandronico2013 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Rocca Abbaziale

   The abbots' castle above Subiaco, built in the eleventh century to defend the monastery's territory and later held by the Borgia — Lucrezia Borgia was born in it. Its terrace looks down the Aniene valley.

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4. 

   4© Marica Massaro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Lucus Angitiae

   A sanctuary of the Italic goddess Angitia, who was said to command snakes and healing, at Luco dei Marsi on the shore of the drained lake. It was the religious centre of the Marsi, whose snake-handling rituals survive in the region's Saint Dominic processions.

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5. 

   5© Pietro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Castello di Carsoli

   A medieval castle at Carsoli guarding the Via Valeria, the Roman road to Rome. Walls and part of a tower survive on the ridge above the modern town.

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6. 

   6© Pietro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Castello di Pereto

   A thirteenth-century castle above the village of Pereto, watching both the settlement and the old road towards Rome. Its keep and walls stand largely intact on the hilltop.

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   7© LPLT · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Church of St. Andrew the Apostle

   The main church of Subiaco, an eighteenth-century neoclassical building on the site of an earlier one, raised to co-cathedral rank. Bombing in 1944 damaged it and the restoration is visible inside.

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8. 

   8© Marica Massaro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Museo Paludi di Celano

   An archaeological museum at Celano holding what came out of the drained bed of Lake Fucino — Bronze Age pile-dwelling material and the finds from a submerged prehistoric village, which the draining exposed.

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9. 

   9© Marica Massaro · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Santuario della Madonna dei Bisognosi

   A pilgrimage church on Monte Serra Secca above Pereto, on the boundary between Lazio and the Abruzzo, so both regions claim its Madonna. It holds fifteenth-century frescoes and is reached by a long single-track road.

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