Family heritage in a historic Turkish village led to an underground discovery of unexpected dimensions, with successive hidden levels, large-scale manual work, and participation of cultural authorities, until transforming the property into a new visiting point linked to the past of Ağırnas.
An apparently single-story house hid four underground levels beneath the floor in Ağırnas, in the Kayseri region, central Turkey, where Mustafa Bozdemir began cleaning the family-inherited property and found a structure much larger than the visible construction.
As he advanced through the lower spaces, the owner removed more than 100 truckloads of earth, invested 80,000 euros, and revealed approximately 2,500 square meters, later opened to visitation as part of an underground complex preserved beneath the residence.
Four levels hidden beneath the house
Although the facade suggested a single-story dwelling, the cleaning led to passages, halls, and new floors carved into the rock, making the construction described as a five-level structure.
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According to Hürriyet Daily News, Bozdemir was living in France when he received the family house and returned to Ağırnas to assess the property, without imagining that the lower environments would extend far beyond the initially identified space.
As the work progressed, each cleared section gave access to another part of the construction, until four additional floors emerged beneath the residence and completely changed the dimension of the restoration planned by the owner in an unexpected way.
Authorization paved the way for excavation
Before proceeding with the removal of accumulated material, Bozdemir reported the discovery to the provincial government of Kayseri and the Directorate of Culture and Tourism, seeking authorization to continue the intervention in an area marked by old properties.
After official clearance, the team resumed work in a locality known for historic houses and rock-carved structures, a context that required care to preserve the environments found during the progressive removal of earth.
One hundred trucks of soil and 80 thousand euros
The volume removed helps to understand the scale of what remained hidden, as ten people participated in the cleaning of about 2,500 square meters, while the soil was manually carried out of the corridors, rooms, and underground accesses.
More than 100 trucks were needed to transport the accumulated material, and the total cost of the operation reached approximately 80 thousand euros, an amount invested by the owner to clear the lower levels without compromising the existing structure.
When the case was disclosed, about 80% of the cleaning had already been completed, although part of the complex remained under recovery, while the team had reached the four lower levels and consolidated the internal accesses.
Instead of removing all the soil at once, the workers advanced by sectors, clearing rooms, passages, and internal connections with a method that allowed monitoring the stability of the structure and preserving the spaces during the authorized process.
Discovery entered the field of historical heritage
Among the materials found were human remains, later examined by a team from Erciyes University, which expanded institutional monitoring and inserted the discovery into the field of historical and archaeological heritage of the region and the property itself.
Located in the Melikgazi district, Ağırnas is also known as the birthplace of Mimar Sinan, one of the main architects of the Ottoman Empire, whose house has underground spaces related to the ancient occupation of the village.
Surveys conducted in the locality recorded a network of structures under historical properties, with sections that remained connected to each other, while ancient accesses were closed with stones throughout different phases of occupation.
Underground network crosses ancient properties
Mapped as part of this set, the space under Bozdemir’s property gathers large halls, passages, and excavated areas that integrate a broader defensive structure existing under Ağırnas and distributed across different properties in the village.
This configuration helps explain the contrast between the external appearance of the residence and the area found below it, as the property had only one floor on the surface but hid four levels underground.
During the restoration, what seemed to be just a support space revealed a vertical sequence of environments, requiring more workers, constant soil transportation, and official authorization for the intervention to advance without interrupting the preservation of the complex.
The term underground city began to be used because the environments exceeded the scale of a residential basement, featuring corridors, halls, and connections to a larger historical network, documented during the mapping conducted in the area.
Excavated in rock formations present in the Kayseri region, the structure contains spacious areas and passages between levels, as well as altered or closed accesses throughout the occupation of the properties built over the complex.
Underground structure was opened to tourism
After the cleaning, the Bozdemir space was opened to tourism, and the residence began to function as an entrance to the recovered underground environments, previously filled with earth and isolated under the property inherited by the family.
By preserving the connection between the house and the four lower floors, the owner avoided blocking the accesses and kept the structure integrated into the property, dedicating the recovered complex to public visitation and the presentation of its historical dimension.
The numbers gathered during the intervention summarize the scale of the transformation: ten workers participated in the cleaning, more than 100 trucks transported earth, 80,000 euros were invested, and 2,500 square meters of underground area were cleared.
Seen from the street, the construction still looked like a single-story house, although the internal access led to corridors, halls, and four levels that remained hidden for decades, until the restoration initiated by the owner.
Would you open four underground floors found beneath your own house for public visitation, preserving the structure as part of the local history shared by the residents, or would you keep the entire space closed and restricted only to the family?
