{"id":12648,"date":"2021-09-20T12:15:42","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T12:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/?p=12648"},"modified":"2021-09-20T12:16:06","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T12:16:06","slug":"underground-city-in-central-turkey-dazzles-visitors-with-its-ancient-tombs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/","title":{"rendered":"Underground city in central Turkey dazzles visitors with its ancient tombs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\tAKSARAY(National Times):The ancient underground city of St. Mercurius in central Turkey impresses visitors with its church and tombs.<br \/>\nThe underground city, located in the central Aksaray province\u2019s Saratli town, is home to a total of 35 ancient tombs and a human skull which was found to belong to the wife of St. Mercurius.<br \/>\nSt. Mercurius, who was born in the Cappadocia region during the Roman Empire, was a commander who lived in A.D. 225-250.<br \/>\nAfter declaring he was a Christian, Mercurius was banished to Cappadocia by Roman Emperor Decius and was sheltered in the underground city of St. Mercurius.<br \/>\nThe emperor then sent his men to the city to have him and his family executed by decapitation and later buried them in a church in the region.<br \/>\nMeanwhile, the skull of Mercurius was taken to Cairo, the capital of Egypt.<br \/>\nAfter the time of St. Mercurius, the underground city served as a shelter for early Christians who were running away from the prosecutions of the Romans in the Cappadocia region.<br \/>\nThe excavations started in the city in 2011, lasting till 2016. Three floors of the seven-story underground settlement have been cleaned during this work and opened to tourism.<br \/>\nSpeaking to Anadolu Agency, Aksaray Museum curator Yusuf Altin said graves in the city attract great attention of local and foreign tourists.<br \/>\n&#8220;The most important feature that distinguishes the St. Mercurius underground city from other underground cities is that it has churches and tombs. During our studies, we found that St. Mercurius and his family were buried in these tombs. Tourists visiting the region wonder how these tombs were made,&#8221; Altin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AKSARAY(National Times):The ancient underground city of St. Mercurius in central Turkey impresses visitors with its church and tombs. The underground city, located in the central Aksaray province\u2019s Saratli town, is home to a total of 35 ancient tombs and a human skull which was found to belong to the wife of St. Mercurius. St. Mercurius, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12649,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","entry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v25.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Underground city in central Turkey dazzles visitors with its ancient tombs - Nation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Underground city in central Turkey dazzles visitors with its ancient tombs - Nation\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"AKSARAY(National Times):The ancient underground city of St. Mercurius in central Turkey impresses visitors with its church and tombs. The underground city, located in the central Aksaray province\u2019s Saratli town, is home to a total of 35 ancient tombs and a human skull which was found to belong to the wife of St. Mercurius. 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The underground city, located in the central Aksaray province\u2019s Saratli town, is home to a total of 35 ancient tombs and a human skull which was found to belong to the wife of St. Mercurius. St. Mercurius, [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/","og_site_name":"Nation","article_published_time":"2021-09-20T12:15:42+00:00","article_modified_time":"2021-09-20T12:16:06+00:00","og_image":[{"width":670,"height":370,"url":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Untitled-2-copy-79.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"adminnation","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"adminnation","Est. reading time":"1 minute"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/","url":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/","name":"Underground city in central Turkey dazzles visitors with its ancient tombs - Nation","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Untitled-2-copy-79.jpg","datePublished":"2021-09-20T12:15:42+00:00","dateModified":"2021-09-20T12:16:06+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#\/schema\/person\/96dc24980f85ecafe26ade8fe4748f0f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Untitled-2-copy-79.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/Untitled-2-copy-79.jpg","width":670,"height":370},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/2021\/12648\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Underground city in central Turkey dazzles visitors with its ancient tombs"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#website","url":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/","name":"Nation","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#\/schema\/person\/96dc24980f85ecafe26ade8fe4748f0f","name":"adminnation","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7f4e66ad9f5639ba3a6f846e43d55d93ee5fd5f30b5c5a10f4cd223008e8fa10?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/7f4e66ad9f5639ba3a6f846e43d55d93ee5fd5f30b5c5a10f4cd223008e8fa10?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"adminnation"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/"],"url":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/author\/adminnation\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12650,"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12648\/revisions\/12650"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nationaltimes.pk\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}