Of Byzantine occupation there are also only scant traces, mainly of the Church of St Procopius, the saint after whom the town was originally named. Ürgüp was known as Osiana (Assiana) in the Byzantine period.

More evidence survives of the Selçuk presence here, especially in the form of the hexagonal Altı Kapılar (Six Gates) tomb of a military commander in the town centre. A symbolic tomb (1863) on top of Temenni Hill commemorates the Selçuk leader Ruknettin Kılıçarslan IV who was killed while in Ürgüp.

In late Ottoman times Prokopi/Ürgüp was home to a mixed population of Turks and Christians; according to the Ottoman General Census of 1881/82–1893, the kaza of Ürgüp had a total population of 23,030, consisting of 19,880 Muslims, 3,134 Greeks and 16 Armenians.

It was during this period that most of the town centre’s grand stone houses, many of them now converted into hotels, were built. Some of these houses still contain fine secular frescoes attesting to the fact that they were designed for members of the minority populations.

The Sucuoğlu Konağı (Mansion) is visible to those prepared to poke around in the ruinous properties – one of its walls is decorated with scenes of a Zeppelin and a hot-air balloon flying over Constantinople/Istanbul.

It was also in the 19th century that a huge church was built to honour St John the Russian. It was demolished in the 1950s and a girls school built on the site; its memory lives on only in photographs. [4]What is now the Şehir Hamamı (City Hamam) is housed inside what was once another Greek Orthodox church in the then Gavur Mahallesi (Infidel Neighbourhood).

In 1924 the Greeks of Prokopi were forced to leave Turkey under the terms of the Treaty of Lausanne. When they left they took the relics of St John the Russian with them to their new home on the island of Euboea in Greece where murals on a church wall now depict the journey from Cappadocia.. Other Greeks from Prokopi settled in Larissa in Greece.