Matiate: The World’s Largest Underground City
Anadolu AgencyOpen hallways inside Matiate, the largest underground city in the world.
Surprisingly, Derinkuyu is not Turkey’s only underground city. In fact, there are at least 40 others that have been found in the country, but in 2022, beneath the foundations of the ancient town of Midyat, researchers discovered another sprawling metropolis known as Matiate.
While cleaning the streets and buildings in the historic town, a group of Turkish conservationists stumbled upon a hidden cave entrance that led down into a massive complex of dozens of tunnels and nearly 50 rooms.
Archaeologists came in to excavate the cave system, finding numerous ancient artifacts that dated back to the second and third centuries C.E. alongside various storage silos, worship altars, and water wells.
“While the houses on the top are dated to the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, there is a completely different city underneath,” said Gani Tarkan, the project’s lead excavator. “That city is 1,900 years old.”
At the time of the discovery, Tarkan said that he believed the city of Matiate — literally the “city of caves” — may have once housed as many as 60,000 or 70,000 people. Amazingly, the excavation team had only explored roughly three percent of the underground city by that point.
Excavations have been going on since 2022, but so far the full size and history of Matiate largely remains a mystery. Still, it’s a unique and surprising revelation that beneath one of Turkey’s most historically significant towns sat another large city, completely undisturbed for nearly 2,000 years.
