	Cavusin, two villages The village of Cavusin stands as a symbol for the massive change that is taking place in Cappadocia recently. The old village has been left and in the direct neighborhood, a new village in European stile has been built. If, as in the case of Cavusin, the cave houses are not inhabited anymore, the erosion process speeds up dramatically. It is nearly impossible to preserve this peculiar environment without finding new uses for it. top
	living in caves All over Cappadocia we can find ancient cave churches and monasteries, mostly originating from the Byzantine era. The numbers are so big that it is only possible to preserve a very small fraction of this unique, man made caves. Sometimes the monastery and church complexes extend over several hundred meters into the rock and were built to shelter whole communities. Living in the cave houses was still common until few decades ago, but has then been discredited as poor and backwards looking. Though its climatic qualities and energy efficiency are still unsurpassed. top
	layers of culture In Cappadocia many layers of culture are overlaid, each expressing a different system of relations with the environment. Beside Byzantine we can also find Hittite, Greek, Armenian, Seljuk and other more recent influences, contributing to the area¡s incredible rich face. During centuries the local farmers have developed a refined coexistence with the natural environment. On the image to the left we can see a pigeonry, that was constructed to collect bird dung to be used on the fields nearby. top
	"landscape of reflection" Cappadocia's tradition is also a tradition of seclusion and reflection. Often people came to the area in order to escape the cultural centers and to live a life that differed from the predominant currents. Nowadays the big number of visitors stays just one or two days. Tours that are mainly organized by big international or national agencies, leave only a small sum of the actual expenses in the area, but the destruction that is caused by tourism is enormous. top
	translating tradition It is nearly impossible to conserve the bigger part of Cappadocia's traditional man made environment, but this would not hurt too much if we could sustain it with a contemporary quality for the following generations. In Cappadocia, more then in many other places around the world, the trajectory nature of tradition becomes obvious. Tradition is not a story with a beginning and an end, but one that has to be constantly rewritten, generation by generation, and the quality of this rewritten continuation is an indicator for the consciousness with which we treat our environment. top