Guide
The underground city at Aydıntepe in Bayburt lies only two to two and a half metres below the surface, and nothing was built into it: the galleries, the vaulted rooms and the wide spaces those rooms open onto were all cut out of the tuff bedrock itself.
Who made it is not settled. It is thought to have belonged to the city known as Halde, or Khalde, and there is a view that Hart, the old name of Aydıntepe, comes from the same word. A grave found in the city and dated to the late Roman and early Byzantine periods shows that it was lived in before Christianity, and raised the possibility that the first Christians used it as a refuge. It is reached by road, on Atatürk Caddesi in Aydıntepe.
