Sobesos Antik Kenti

Sobesos shows a completely different face to visitors who know Cappadocia through its rock-cut settlements; here the buildings were not carved into rock but built of stone on open ground. The ancient city lies about 23 kilometres south of Ürgüp, just southeast of the village of Şahinefendi. The ruins are close to the source of the Damsa Stream, and the villagers call the place Örencik. Wikipedia describes the site as a settlement founded on fertile land at the starting point of the Soğanlı Valley. The city's story begins in 2002. That year people digging illegally came across a building with mosaics by chance, and official excavations then began. The excavations were carried out by the Nevşehir Archaeological Museum in 2002 to 2005 and in 2010 to 2011. In later years the work continued under the direction of academics from Nevşehir Hacı Bektaş Veli University. When first found, the ruins were thought to belong to the capital of the Cappadocian kingdom, but this view was abandoned because no evidence supported it. The name Sobesos appears only in a list from the reign of the Byzantine emperor Leo VI and is not seen in later lists. The art historian Can Erpek, who studied the site, stresses that no written document confirms that the excavated area is Sobesos. According to research, the settlement was founded in the 4th century AD, and it is not known for certain when it was abandoned. In the Byzantine period a regional road running from the Mavrucan Stream to Ürgüp and from there to the Kızılırmak passed through this settlement. According to Erpek, this road continued via present-day Taşkınpaşa to Ürgüp and from there towards Avcılar and Göreme. Since almost nothing has survived from large Roman cities such as Kayseri and Aksaray, Sobesos is seen as a site that provides rare data on the late antique period of the region. The most visited part of the city is the villa with mosaics. This two-storey building is thought to have been commissioned by one of the wealthy aristocrats of Cappadocia. Its floor mosaics were made with coloured stone and glass and include geometric patterns such as meander, eight-pointed star and guilloche. In a later phase the building was used for religious purposes and a cemetery formed around it. Today the mosaics are under a protective roof and can be seen from walkways. The bath at the northern end of the settlement is an L-shaped variation of the row-type baths typical of the Roman period. Visitors can follow in order the sections made up of a changing room, two cold rooms, a warm room, a hot room and a steam room. The bath was heated with a hypocaust system that circulated hot air under the floor. The floor mosaics of the changing room show circles within a guilloche border, with star, rhombus, partridge and flower motifs. At the door of one of the cold rooms a pair of sandal motifs stands out. From the 7th century onwards parts of the bath came to be used as houses and workshops, with doors and walls added. According to the head of excavations, Sobesos presents a classical city plan in which civil, public and religious architecture spread across open ground, and in this respect it is the only example in Nevşehir. Traces of settlement reaching back not only to the Roman period but also to the Neolithic and the Bronze Age have been found on the site. Surface surveys around the city have also yielded pottery fragments. The head of excavations says that new finds in the coming years may change current knowledge considerably. A natural order for the visit is to start with the mosaics in the villa and walk north to the bath. The site is open and shadeless, so in summer come early in the morning or in the late afternoon. Check current visiting conditions with the Ürgüp Museum Directorate and the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Sobesos is reached by car on the road from Ürgüp towards Şahinefendi; the route can be planned via Mustafapaşa.