Known as Matiana, Goreme Town is one of the two places with an Early Christian Age name. There are five churches in the town. The Durmus Church, dating 6th or 7th century, is preserved with its altar and engraved columns. The unworn appearence of the rock gives the feeling that it was not used much. Probably the village was abondoned during the Arab raids. The rock fall of the northern side is recent. The other churches are 10th or 11th century. The most recent one is the church of Yusuf Koc.

Christians and communities of monks turned the area into a place of refuge and refreshment, setting up their hide-outs inside the tufa pinnacles, which were easily camouflaged and defended. Skilled stone masons were thus free to express themselves by getting ideas from churches built in masonry in the large towns with a marked preference for ornateness, which later disappeared. With the exception of the Iconoclastic period (between 715 and 843) when the churches only tolerated abstract, symbolic decorations, painting came into its own here, leading to a Cappadocian style inspired by stylistic features in the large towns, and which itinerant artists reinterpreted and schematized according to the needs of the habitues of the monasteries. The fact that the figures and natural elements were highly stylized is perhaps due to the fact that churches were placed in a large monastic complex; to the monks, the frescoed figures could only have been a reference to the Holy Scriptures with which they were familiar. The rather poor workmanship (often funds had to be collected to finance the frescoes) combined with the Iconoclastic influence contributed to the abstraction and awkwardness: oval vaults, square busts and fixed expressions.

Local religious architecture was divided into typologies partially connected to periods, albeit controversial. There are still differences of opinion on the dating of the abstract or symbolic geometric designs; it is generally believed that they date back to the Iconoclastic era and, as they are painted directly onto the rock walls, the date of the actual building of the complexes has been deduced. However, it would appear that these paintings are in fact more recent and were only used to decorate the walls while waiting for the final figurative decoration, executed on a coat of plaster. The exact date of the monuments has, therefore, been recently changed to the XI century; however, the sequence of architectural phases has remained unchanged: churches with a square plan, covered by flat and barrel roofs and featuring a small semi-circular apsidiole followed by churches built along similar lines but with three apses; only later did churches with three naves closed by columns (4 or 8) come into existence. The most recent type, introduced in Constantinopolis during the IX-X century and diffused in Cappadocia as from the beginning of the XI, follows a roughly rectangular plan with four columns placed in the centre of the room, and a lowered floor. The central vault and sometimes also the side ones is covered by a dome, whereas the bottom wall opens out into three apsidioles. Churches of this kind also housed the aforementioned symbolic paintings which were sometimes covered by layers of plaster. The animals depicted each represented something: the fish, due to its Greek name "iktus" which stood for the phrase "Jesus Kristos Teou Uios Soter" that is "Jesus Christ son of God, Saviour" , symbolizes Christ himself, while the dove has always been the symbol of peace and the Holy Spirit. Deer symbolize the soul and peacocks the resurrection whereas it is not certain what other animals were supposed to symbolize: the cock which represented the day, vitality and light and, in the wider sense, goodness to the Greeks and the palm, direct oriental evolution of the tree of life and portrayal of vital energy and eternity. Some rock structures in the area were used for burial purposes: one of the most evocative examples is to be found upon one's arrival in Goreme, where a rock pinnacle contains a mortuary chapel embellished by a small facade. The interior features a square room with a pew leading to a lunette apse; in the floor and at a later stage also in the pews graves were hewn; they were then covered by fitted slabs.

The Goreme area also includes the El Nazar valley where the fairy chimneys house rock complexes, like the "Church of the Madonna"; the nearby valley of Kiliclar Vadisi contains another church called "Church of Kiliclar", which, despite its lack of frescoes, boasts fine four-columned architecture.