Guy Knocks Down His Basement Wall and Discovers Ancient Underground City That Once Housed 20,000 People

When a man knocked down a wall in his basement in the Nevşehir Province of Turkey, he ended up discovering an enormous underground city.

Image credit: Nevit Dilmen/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
In 1963, a man (not named in reports from the time) in the Nevşehir Province of Turkey sledgehammered a wall in his basement and found a tunnel behind it. And the tunnel connected to more tunnels. When archaeologists later arrived to the site, they revealed an entire underground city which was up to 18 stories deep and had everything needed for underground life, including schools, chapels, and even stables.

Located in Cappadocia, Turkey, the underground city of Derinkuyu has been abandoned for a long time, even though it may have hold up to 20,000 people in the past. Work on the city may have begun as far back as the 8th–7th centuries BCE, according to archaeologists at the Turkish Department of Culture.