[1] The city could accommodate up to 20,000 people and had amenities found in other underground complexes across Cappadocia,[2][3] such as wine and oil presses, stables, cellars, storage rooms, refectories, and chapels.

[citation needed] Caves might have been built initially in the soft volcanic rock of the Cappadocia region by the Phrygians in the 8th-7th century BC.

[8][c] The city at Derinkuyu was fully formed in the Byzantine era, when it was heavily used as protection from Arab Muslims during the Arab–Byzantine wars (780–1180 AD).

[11][e][12][f] After the region fell to the Ottomans, the cities were used as refuges (Cappadocian Greek: καταφύγια) by the natives from the Turkish Muslim rulers.

[12] Richard MacGillivray Dawkins, a Cambridge linguist who conducted research from 1909 to 1911 on the Cappadocian Greek-speaking natives in the area, recorded such an event as having occurred in 1909: "When the news came of the recent massacres at Adana, a great part of the population at Axo took refuge in these underground chambers, and for some nights did not venture to sleep above ground.