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Paşabağ in is located on the road to Zelve, about 7 km from Göreme. Highly remarkable stone pillars can be seen here, in the middle of a vineyard, hence the name of the place which means ‘Pacha's vineyard’. ‘Pacha’ means general (a military rank) in Turkish. This place is also called Monks’ valley. The name has come from some high tuff stone columns which stand apart.
Some of these cones have split into smaller cones in their upper sections, in which stylites (or Pillar-Saints, a type of Christian ascetic who in the early days of the Byzantine Empire stood on pillars preaching, fasting and praying) and hermits once hid. The hermitage of Simeon monks was also here. A chapel dedicated to St. Simeon (Simon), and a hermit’s shelter was built into one of the fairy chimneys with three caps. The entrance of the cell is decorated with antithetical crosses. Saint Simeon was living in seclusion near Aleppo in the 5th century, when rumors that he made miracles started to spread. Disturbed by all the attention, he began to live at the top of a 2 m high column, and later moved to one 15 m in height. From there he only came down occasionally to get food and drink brought by his disciples. The hermits of Cappadocia distanced themselves from the stylites by cutting rooms into fairy chimneys rather than living on top of columns. They hollowed out the chimneys from bottom to top creating rooms which are 10-15 m high.
Paşabağ contains some of the most striking fairy chimneys in Cappadocia with twin and even triple rock-caps. These mushroom-shaped fairy chimneys are unique even for Cappadocia.
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