Fascinating Cave Dwellings in the World

People have lived in caves in many parts of the world. These caves were used as homes and places of worship, and they were often linked to other buildings on the surface. After people stopped living in the cave towns, the buildings on the surface fell apart, leaving only the caves. But not all cave homes have been left empty. In some parts of northern China, people still live in caves. More than 40 million people live in caves.

List of Fascinating Cave Dwellings in the World:

Guyaju

Guyaju is an old cave house about 92 kilometers (57 miles) from Beijing. It is sometimes called the biggest maze in China. Since no exact record of it has ever been found, no one knows where it came from. The house was cut out of the rocks that look out over Zhangshanying Town. The building is made of more than 110 rooms made of stone. It is the largest cave house ever found in China.

Matmata

A small town called Matmata is in the south of Tunisia. Some Berber people live in traditional “troglodyte” homes that are built underground. To make these cave homes, people dig a big hole in the ground.

Caves are then dug around the edge of this pit to be used as rooms. The fact that Luke Skywalker, his aunt and uncle Lars, and his cousin Jar Jar Binks lived in these houses made them well-known. Star Wars fans who want to stay in Matmata should stay at the Hotel Sidi Driss, which used to be the Lars Homestead.

Sassi di Matera

The Sassi di Matera (which means “stones of Matera”) are cave homes in the old town of Matera, which is in southern Italy. The Sassi were one of the first places where people lived in Italy. They are the remains of a prehistoric village. Many of the houses, which are dug into the tufa rock, are just caves, and the streets in some parts of the Sassi are often on the roofs of other houses.

In the 1950s, the government moved most of the people who lived in the Sassi to parts of the city that were becoming more urban. Some people, though, kept living in the Sassi as their ancestors did 9,000 years ago.

Mesa Verde

Mesa Verde is in southwestern Colorado, near the town of Cortez. It is where the famous Anasazi cliff houses are found. It might be the most important Native American archaeological site in the United States. The Anasazi started making homes in shallow caves and under rock overhangs along the canyon walls in the 12th century.

Some of these homes were so big that they had up to 150 rooms. Cliff Palace and Spruce Tree House are two of the most well-known. By 1300, all of the Anasazi had left the area around Mesa Verde, but almost all of the ruins were still there. The reason why they left so quickly is still a mystery. Some people think that crop failures were caused by droughts, while others think that groups from the North moved into the area.

Bandiagara Escarpment

The Bandiagara Escarpment is a sandstone cliff in the Dogon country of Mali that rises almost 500 meters (1,640 feet) from the lower sandy flats below. The Tellem people used to live in caves along these cliffs.

These people cut their caves into the cliffs of the escarpment so that their dead could be buried high above the flash floods that happen often in the area. They built a lot of towns along the cliffs above the caves. The Dogon moved the Tellem out of this area in the 14th century, and they still live there today.

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Vardzia

In southern Georgia, Vardzia is a cave monastery and city built into a cliff in the 12th century. It looks out over a river gorge. It’s one of the most amazing things to see in the land. During the time of Queen Tamar, cave homes were built to protect the people from the Mongols. They had more than 600 flats in a 13-story building. The city had a church, a room for the king, and a complicated system for watering terraced farms. The only way to get to the complex was through some caves that were well hidden near the river Mtkvari. Today, a small group of monks takes care of Vardzia, which can be seen for a small fee.

 Kandovan

Kandovan is a strange village from the 1300s that is in Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province. Many of the homes in Kandovan were built in caves in cone-shaped, naturally formed, compressed volcanic ash forms that make the landscape look like a huge termite colony. Most of the cave homes have between two and four floors.

In a typical four-story house, the bottom floor is used as an animal shelter, the next two floors are used as living spaces, and the top floor is used for storage. The pillars’ hardened material is a good absorber, so the cave homes stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

Ortahisar

Ortahisar, whose name means “middle castle,” is in the middle of the Cappadocian towns of Goreme in central Turkey. The castle of Ortahisar, which is in a cave 86 meters (282 feet) high, stands out the most. The castle has been used for both defense and living. Part of the castle has fallen apart, showing some of its insides. Today, it has been fixed up, and a ladder leads to the top.

Uchisar

Uchisar is another town in Cappadocia. It is the highest point in the area and is only 7 km from Nevşehir. You can see the rock castle of Uchisar from miles away. This rock used to have the most people living in the caves inside of it. But as weathering made the area more dangerous, people moved away. In the 1950s, the last people to live there left. From the top of the castle, you can see a beautiful view of the area.

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