Hezen Cave Hotel

Some Western travelers’ mental maps of Turkey look a bit like those ancient world maps with dragons at the edges: there’s Istanbul, and then there’s this great big Asian land mass with a question mark on it. Needless to say, they’re missing out. The otherworldly rock formations of central Turkey and the cave houses of Cappadocia aren’t exactly a secret, but they should, by all rights, be more famous than they are. For now, though, the region’s state of transition — between hidden gem and well-developed resource — is the best of both worlds for visitors, both accessible and yet still full of local character. A bit like the Hezen Cave Hotel.

Here, in the Cappadocian town of Ortahisar, rock houses climb hills in spectacular style, and the Hezen Cave Hotel shows what a contemporary designer can do with Cappadocia’s traditional architecture as a canvas. The interiors are eclectic, certainly historically influenced, yet full of contemporary comforts, the stone walls providing a healthy dose of ancient romance. Imagine a modern European-style design hotel transplanted to a cave in the Cappadocia hills and you’re essentially there — were it not for the sandstone (and, to be fair, the pervasive silence), you might expect to find the streets of Istanbul awaiting outside.