Even though today we have seen the burial of ancient cities as a natural progression of time, there were actually a few ancient communities that were built underground from the beginning.
An underground city offered several advantages over surface dwellings. The community would have been protected from the weather, and would be relatively easy to defend, depending on how the city was set up. Here are a few of the most prominent ancient underground cities in the world.
1. Elengubu, Turkey
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The Cappadocia region of Turkey is abundant in underground settlements and cliffside dwellings. The largest of these was Elengubu, also known today as Derinkuyu, which may have been home to up to 20,000 people.
The whole area of Cappadocia has alien planet-like rock formations and chasms. Elengubu sits about 85 meters below the surface and has 18 levels of tunnels. The whole area was undiscovered until the mid-20th century, when renovations at a home revealed a hidden room with extensive passages.
It wasn’t clear how old these caves were, or who built them, but they might date back as far as the Hittites in the second millennium B.C. The Phrygians, who subsequently inhabited the area, likely expanded the tunnels, along with the Byzantines. The tunnels included sections with massive circular stones that could be rolled in to block passages for defense.
2. Naours, France
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The underground city of Naours in northern France isn’t as ancient as some of the others on this list. It’s only a few hundred years old, built in a chalk quarry that dates to the 15th century. People didn’t use these caves extensively until the Thirty Years War of the 17th century though, when people used it as a refuge.
German forces as a defense also used the city while occupying France during World War II. The underground city in Naours has around 300 rooms and 28 galleries, and hosted up to 3,000 people at one point. The modern city of Naours only has a population of 1,200.
Read More: 5 Ancient Cities That No Longer Exist
3. Orvieto, Italy
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The Italian city of Orvieto dates to Etruscan times and is only partly underground. Over thousands of years, the people of this city northwest of Rome dug caves under their homes, creating thousands of spaces they used to capture pigeons, store goods, and take refuge from threats.
Some caves were connected through labyrinthine passages while others were only accessible through the property that sat above them. As a result, tourists can only visit parts of the caves today.
4. Wieliczka Salt Mine, Poland
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Work on a massive salt mine outside Krakow, Poland began more than seven centuries ago. Over time, miners built chapels, statues, and other artwork into the mine itself, which had hundreds of kilometers of galleries.
Considered a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its preservation and history, the mine was worked continuously on until 1996. Parts of Wieliczka, which is also called the Salt Cathedral, carried crystals as well as the salt for the country of Poland throughout history.
Read More: Stop Searching For Atlantis And Find These 4 Ancient Underwater Cities Instead
5. The Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, U.S.
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The Ancestral Puebloans, or Anasazi, built several settlements into the face of cliffs but overhangs covered most of them. The Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde was one of the largest of these settlements, which was mostly inhabited starting in the late 12th century.
It was unclear exactly why the Ancestral Pueblo moved off the mesa tops and into these natural alcoves, but it may have been a defensive strategy. They didn’t live there long, deserting the palace about a century later.
The palace wasn’t completely protected from the elements — after people left, the structures deteriorated from wind, and water for more than half a millennium until settlers noticed it in the 1880s and began to dig up — and sometimes used dynamite — the ruins in search of treasure. The area received some protection in 1906 with the establishment of the Mesa Verde National Park, and archaeologists and other specialists began to work on preservation afterwards.
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Joshua Rapp Learn is an award-winning D.C.-based science writer. An expat Albertan, he contributes to a number of science publications like National Geographic, The New York Times, The Guardian, New Scientist, Hakai, and others.
