When we think of Cappadocia today, the first thing that probably comes to mind is a sky full of hot air balloons, geological formations resembling the surface of Mars, fairy chimneys, subterranean cities, rock churches, and countless media images that reinforce the association these images have with the place called Cappadocia. But how well do we really know this region, which no longer appears in modern geographical atlases, even if it has become very popular with tourists from Turkey and abroad?

First of all, Cappadocia is the name of a Roman and Byzantine province whose administrative borders have changed repeatedly for about a thousand years starting from the first century AD. In this regard, it is a natural, “Open Air History Museum” that has painstakingly preserved the physical and cultural heritage of this civilization and the unique geomorphological structure of the Central Anatolian Plateau. When the region left the political hegemony of Byzantium in the twelfth century, its name was gradually forgotten and rarely mentioned by anyone other than the Istanbul Patriarchate under Ottoman rule. It was Western travelers and researchers in the nineteenth century who revived the name Cappadocia and the historical and geographical context that it defines. In his presentation Tolga Uyar pursues the ever-changing “Image of Cappadocia” from Byzantium to modern Instagram and Twitter posts. Based on the rich cultural heritage that is at risk of being destroyed, Uyar traces the gripping, yet little-known, cultural identity of the region during the Middle Ages.

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