There are 19 cultural heritage sites and 2 mixed heritage sites. Mixed heritage sites contain elements of both natural and cultural significance.

If you enjoy visiting cultural and historic sites, here’s part one of two articles that may help you to choose the ones for your next trip to Türkiye.

Sites on the World Heritage List (Cultural)

Afrodisias (Aphrodisias)

Located in Southwestern Türkiye, some two and a half hours’ drive inland from Kuşadaşı, the archaeological site at Afrodisias is one of Türkiye’s finest. Because of its isolated position, so much of the site still survives and you can get a very real sense of the grandeur and extent of the ancient city.

The temple of Aphrodite dates from the 3rd century BC and the city was built one century later. The wealth of Aphrodisias came from the marble quarries and the art produced by its sculptors. The city streets are arranged around several large civic structures, which include temples, a theatre, an agora and two bath complexes. Afrodisias was added to the World Heritage List on Sunday 9th July 2017.

Archaeological Site of Ani

Registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the Ani archaeological site, also known as the “city of a thousand and one churches”, attracts tourists all year round. The ancient city, which houses Islamic architectural works of the 11th and 12th centuries, was added to the World Heritage List on July 15, 2016. 

Click on the link below to read our previous article about Ani.

Archaeological Site of Troy

One of the most important ancient settlements in the world, located at the top of Hisarlık hill about 30 kilometres south of Çanakkale, the history of Troy city dates back to five thousand years ago.

Homer’s work regarded as the origin of European literature was based on the city, which was included in UNESCO World Cultural Heritage List in 1998.

Arslantepe Mound

Arslantepe, an archaeological site in Malatya, Türkiye dating back to the 6th millennium BCE, boasts an adobe palace and the earliest swords in the world.

The archaeological mound in southeastern Türkiye was chosen for UNESCO’s World Heritage List on July 26, 2021. 

Arslantepe Mound (meaning “Lion Hill” in Turkish), is a 30-metre-tall archaeological tell located in the Malatya plain, 12 km southwest of the Euphrates River. Archaeological evidence from the site testifies to its occupation from at least the 6th millennium BCE up until the late Roman period. 

Arslantepe Mound had been on UNESCO’s World Heritage Tentative List since 2014, and it is one of Türkiye’s earliest religious and civil sites. The mound is thought to date back 8,000 years. Archaeological evidence from the site testifies to its occupation from at least the 6th millennium BCE up until the late Roman period.

The mound has been home to many civilisations over centuries. UNESCO details them as “The earliest layers of the Early Uruk period are characterized by adobe houses from the first half of the 4th millennium BCE. The most prominent and flourishing period of the site was in the Late Chalcolithic period, during which the so-called palace complex was constructed. 

Bursa and Cumalıkızık: the Birth of the Ottoman Empire

Perched on the wooded northern slopes of Uludağ, Bursa was the first capital city of the Ottoman Empire and, in a real sense, the birthplace of modern Turkish culture.

The site illustrates the creation of an urban and rural system establishing the Ottoman Empire in the early 14th century. Cumalıkızık is a village in the Yıldırım district of Bursa Province, located 10 kilometres east of the city of Bursa, at the foot of Mount Uludağ. Its history goes back to the Ottoman Empire’s foundation period. Bursa and Cumalıkızk were added to the World Heritage List in 2014.

City of Safranbolu

Safranbolu is a town in the Black Sea region of northern Türkiye, once a stop on the trade route between Europe and the Orient.

Its Ottoman architecture includes the old Çarşı district, with hundreds of preserved, red-roofed Ottoman houses on cobblestone streets. Cinci Han is a 17th-century caravansary with rooftop views over the town. Nearby, Tarihi Cinci Hamam is a restored 17th-century bathhouse, still in operation. Safranbolu was added to the World Heritage List in 1994.

Diyarbakır Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape

Located on an escarpment of the Upper Tigris River Basin that is part of the so-called Fertile Crescent, the fortified city of Diyarbakır and the landscape around has been an important centre since the Hellenistic period, through the Roman, Sassanid, Byzantine, Islamic and Ottoman times to the present.

The site encompasses the Inner castle, known as İçkale and including the Amida Mound, and the 5.8 km-long city walls of Diyarbakır with their numerous towers, gates, buttresses, and 63 inscriptions. The site also includes the Hevsel Gardens, a green link between the city and the Tigris that supplied the city with food and water, the Anzele water source and the Ten-Eyed Bridge. Diyarbakır Fortress and Hevsel Gardens Cultural Landscape were added to the World Heritage List in 2015.

Ephesus

Famous throughout history for its Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, this great and sacred city lay in ruins until the early 20th century.

Now it is one of the most extensive archaeological sites in the world. Ephesus was added to the World Heritage List in 2015.

Click on the link below to read our previous article about Ephesus.

Göbekli Tepe

Göbekli Tepe, which means Potbelly Hill in Turkish, dates back nearly 12,000 years and is considered one of the world’s oldest temples, featuring massive carved stones and T-shaped pillars that predate the invention of agriculture. 

Göbekli Tepe was added to the World Heritage List in 2018.

Gordion

The archaeological site of Gordion ranks as one of the most important historical centres in the ancient Near East. Gordion lies approximately ninety kilometres south-west of Ankara in central Türkiye, at the intersection of the great empires to the east (Assyrians, Babylonians, Hittites) and the west (Greeks, Romans). Consequently, it occupied a strategic position on nearly all trade routes that linked the Aegean and Mediterranean seas with the Near East. Gordion is an outstanding archaeological site for understanding the Phrygian civilisation and its achievements. The buildings of its Early Phrygian citadel, and the burial mounds of the city’s rulers, constitute the exceptional exemplars of monumental architecture in the Iron Age Near East.

Gordion was added to the World Heritage List in 2023

Sources: UNESCO/Wikipedia/Featured image courtesy of National Geographic

This post was first published on 9 December 2021 and updated on 14 November 2023

The post UNESCO World Heritage sites in Türkiye – part one appeared first on Fethiye Times.

Registered on the UNESCO World Heritage List, the Ani archaeological site, also known as the “city of a thousand and one churches”, attracts tourists all year round. The ancient city, which houses Islamic architectural works of the 11th and 12th centuries, was added to the World Heritage List on July 15, 2016.

Ani is located in the northeast of Türkiye, close to Arpaçay district in Kars province, on a secluded triangular plateau overlooking a ravine that forms the natural border with Armenia.

This medieval city, once one of the cultural and commercial centres on the Silk Roads, is characterized by architecture that combines a variety of domestic, religious and military structures, creating a panorama of a medieval urbanism built up over the centuries by successive Christian and Muslim dynasties.

Inhabited since the Bronze Age, Ani flourished in the 10th and 11th centuries AD, when it became the capital of the medieval Armenian kingdom of the Bagratids, and profited from control over one branch of the Silk Roads.

Later, under Byzantine, Seljuk, and Georgian sovereignty, it maintained its status as an important crossroads for merchant caravans, controlling trade routes between Byzantium, Persia, Syria and Central Asia.

In fact, Ani has hosted some 23 civilizations since its establishment and is also considered the first entrance gate to Anatolia from the Caucasus.

The Mongol invasion, along with a devastating earthquake in 1319 and a change in trade routes, marked the beginning of the city’s decline. It was all but abandoned by the 18th century.

In photos: the unique beauty of Ani

Most visitors travel on the Doğu Express to see the ancient site which is described as mesmerisingly beautiful.

Other articles you may find interesting:

The empire the world forgot

Sources: UNESCO/Daily Sabah/DK Eyewitness

Featured photograph courtesy of PeopleOfAr

The post The unique and evocative beauty of Ani appeared first on Fethiye Times.

Please click on the link below if you missed Part One.

All aboard the Turistik Doğu Ekspresi to Kars

Written for Fethiye Times and with photographs by Mike Vickers and Jan Jones

Kars. The colder the weather, the warmer the people

Blimey, our room at the Güngören was hot! This was due to a radiator the size of a tennis court with the control valve apparently welded fully open. I couldn’t move it, however much I tried. As a result, we found the room stifling, although I’ve little doubt any Turkish guests would consider it barely warm. The only option was to open the window to allow in a breath of fresh air, but was this wise, Captain Mainwaring? This was Kars. In January. The outside temperature was an earlobe-numbing -17C. Our window looked out past yard-long, glistening, fang-like icicles. Pigeons puffed up to the size of beach balls were huddled on our balcony railing.

So, on our first night, unable to turn off the radiator and in an attempt to avert heat exhaustion, we actually cracked open the window, probably the first people ever to do so in January! The inflated pigeons perked up. Their cousins in Ankara station had texted them about the benefits of indoor living. Maybe this was their chance. Thankfully, the tiniest gap was amply sufficient to lower the temperature to a bearable level for a good night’s sleep.

Unlike Fethiye, where enquiries about gas central heating are, let’s face it, something of a rarity, Kars is fortunate enough to have its own natural gas mains supply via a spur leading in from the nearby South Caucasus Pipeline. This means boilers, steaming vents, proper radiators and radiant gas heaters in all their different forms. In other words, if you’re indoors, you’re warm. If you do venture outdoors, just make sure you’re wearing double the number of clothes you would normally wear, such as two pairs of socks, two pairs of trousers, two t-shirts, two pairs of gloves, you know the sort of thing. Even slim people end up looking distinctly spherical. Still, at least if you fall over on the ice you just bounce straight back up again.

I mention all this because it’s really rather important to factor in the temperature, whatever you’re doing. Go outside in the wrong clothing and you could be in a lot of trouble very quickly. Naturally, the good people of Kars are entirely acclimatized. Cars in Kars do not slow down for ice. No need – everyone drives on super grippy snow tyres. Pedestrians do not tip-toe over icy pavements. No need – everyone has proper boots.

So, after a typical buffet tourist hotel breakfast, we ventured out to take in the lie of the land. Locals strode about nonchalantly texting while we warily negotiated surfaces that would have challenged any bobsleigh team. My word was it cold. I mean, properly cold. If you’re youngish, think winter 1982. If you’re of a more mature disposition, like me, 1963 comes to mind.

Modern Kars is laid out on the usual grid system, but the old town is much more interesting, with strong Armenian and Russian influences – unsurprising as the city only finally became Turkish in 1920. The castle dominates the city up on its crag, but the path was just a little too icy. We posed for photos outside the striking Church of the Apostles, built in 930 on a tetraconch layout, but I can imagine many of you glazing over at this point. What little interest I personally had in tetraconchal architecture had by now been replaced by an overwhelming compulsion for hot chocolate and something warm to eat.

We finally fetched up at Sütlü Çardak, a bright and bustling restaurant deploying a winning combination of gas and electric heaters to produce a snug atmosphere. Lunch was excellent and the place hummed with youthful cool. It pains me to point out we didn’t qualify on either point, but no matter.

I swear I saw Torvill and Dean bolero their way gracefully into a Migros as we slithered back to the hotel.

Amber Travel had arranged a local guide for us and that evening, the very amiable Celil picked us up and took us to a dark and cosy traditional restaurant in town. Sorry, but none of us can remember its name – we were concentrating so hard on safely negotiating those Cresta Run pavements! This place specialized in live music and piti, a local delicacy of mutton and chickpeas on sauce-soaked flatbread, a real stick-to-your-ribs meal ideal for keeping those internal furnaces well stoked. Drinks flowed. I’m prepared to admit I may have engaged in some rakı-induced folk dancing at some stage of the evening.

The following day (window open again last night, optimistic pigeons edging ever closer, icicles another inch longer), Celil picked us up from the hotel in his minibus and we set off for the ruined city of Ani. The landscape outside Kars is essentially steppe, empty and undulating, with only the occasional deeply hibernating village to interrupt the desolate snowy grip of winter. It was extraordinarily beautiful.

The roads were, in general, very good indeed and kept clear by regular ploughing. There were virtually no trees and certainly no hedges of any kind, the long narrow fields defined only by lines of black stones poking up through the snow. We paused at a high point and there, above the distant clouds, rose the misty conical shadow of Mount Ararat, over 200km to the south. Now that was a moment to remember.

The sun came out as we eventually reached Ani, its massive walls springing suddenly from the frigid emptiness. Ani was once the capital of ancient Armenia but the city never really recovered from a devastating earthquake in the 14th century and was finally fully abandoned by the early 18th century. The site is enormous, but apart from sections of the city walls and some scattered monumental buildings, is now mostly a wilderness of rubble. As we walked around amongst the piles of stones, I saw some tracks in the snow.

‘What are these, Celil?’

‘The small ones are fox.’

‘And the big ones?’

‘Wolf.’

A sobering moment. I would not want to be stranded in Ani at night.

Celil proved a fount of knowledge. There isn’t much about Ani he doesn’t know. We took a circuitous route that took in ancient churches and the magnificent 11th-century cathedral, the largest remaining standing structure on the site. As we approached, a guide already inside was entertaining his customers by singing opera. He had a very fine voice, but it was a surreal moment as the music floated out of the ruins – he was singing what we all know as Just One Cornetto.

One major feature of Ani is the deep gorge of the Arpaçay River which defended much of the city. We were now at the very edge of eastern Turkey – the far bank is actually Armenia. There was once a bridge carrying the Silk Road across, but now only the ruined brick towers remain. It was so quiet there in the pale sunshine we could hear the river far below chuckling over pebbles. The border is currently closed and there are military bases and watchtowers on both sides.

The visit to Ani was tremendous. The place is hauntingly impressive, its setting magnificent, with a backdrop of snowy peaks, yet we saw something just as wonderful on the journey back to Kars. Without warning, Celil pulled over on the deserted road and pointed. Perhaps a hundred yards away, trotting through the snow, were grey wolves, two on the right side of the road, one on the left. I thought about those tracks back in the ruins.

As we are citizens of Fethiye, we could not possibly visit Kars without visiting the Fethiye Camii, a former 19th-century Russian Orthodox Church now converted into a mosque.  It’s lost its onion dome and tower, but gained two minarets. On the way back to the hotel, as we waited at the lights, Robin Cousins glided past before elegantly triple-salchowing his way into a nearby pharmacy.

We took our evening meal at Sütlü Çardak, knowing the place positively bristled with world-class heaters. The moment we finished eating, they pounced! Five students at the next table had politely waited but were now eager to know why we were in Kars. They expressed genuine astonishment on discovering we actually wanted to come to Kars. All were learning English and just could not pass up the chance of finding themselves sitting next to three English people, something of a rarity it seemed. They were studying the professions and all were delightful, charming, confident and lovely youngsters. It struck me at that moment – the colder the weather, the warmer the people.

Our third and final day in Kars was again spent with Celil, who arrived after breakfast in his trusty minibus to take us to Lake Çıldır. This visit was the original reason why we decided to come to Kars – Jan had always wanted to take a troika ride on a frozen lake and at last here was her chance. Çıldır lies at about the same height as the summit of Babadağ and so at this time of year was well and truly frozen, its ice crust at least two feet thick. Now, I know this sounds obvious, but the surface of a frozen lake is just about as flat as you can get and therefore offered absolutely no protection at all from the frigid wind whipping across the ice. I thought it was cold in Kars, but this was something else. No wonder the water was solid! An hour out there and I would be, too.

Fortunately, there was a hut out on the lake serving piping hot tea and mulled wine to counter the biting cold. Customers and troika drivers stood around a brazier warming themselves. A fire? On ice? Yes, the fire was on stilts to prevent the dangers of melting.

Our horse was called Champion and the only way his handler could stop him bolting straight back to his cosy stable was to stuff his face into a nosebag full of oats! Clever horse. Worked that one to his advantage, don’t you think? We three squeezed onto this tiny wooden sled while Celil sagely retired to the warmth of a nearby fish restaurant and off we went, trotting over the snow-covered ice. This was no marathon, thankfully, but a five-minute scamper that left us rosy-cheeked and cold-bottomed from the bare wooden seats – but it was truly, truly wonderful. On our return, Michelle joined Celil in the warm while Jan and I trotted back out to watch some ice fishing with two Turkish ladies, one of whom, astonishingly, was not wearing gloves.

This guy wasn’t daft. This was ice fishing purely for the tourists. Two holes had been punched through the ice about 25 yards apart with the net strung between them. Our fisherman used a shovel to break the layer of ice that was readily skimming over the holes and pulled in his net. The gloveless Turkish lady helped. Her hands must have been perishing. Five or six fish were entangled in the mesh as the net emerged. The fisherman extricated one – which our companion promptly kissed – before returning the net down beneath the ice again – still loaded up with some pretty cheesed-off-looking fish. This meant the next group of tourists were guaranteed to see some caught in the net, a win-win situation for everyone. Except for the fish.

We joined Michelle and Celil in the fish restaurant. I had meatballs.

After lunch, Celil drove us further along the lake shore for quite a distance. Çıldır’s a big lake. We passed through some fairly remote villages, all hunkered down for the winter. Life was obviously very hard here. Many of the homes were simple black stone structures with turf roofs. These half-buried houses only had tiny roof windows, but each sported a flue that shimmered with heat from a soba. I thought of Ankara and its funky new skyscrapers. The contrast was humbling.

The wind got up on our way home, blowing sheets of powdery snow across the deserted roads. With an hour or so to spare, Celil gave us a short tour of the old town behind the castle. We British were responsible for many of the fortifications up there, in contrast to some ornate Russian riverside palaces, some of which have been converted into boutique hotels.

For our final evening meal, we chose the Kars Kazevi goose restaurant. Kaz, or goose, is a local delicacy and we each had a delicious bowl of shredded goose meat on a bed of rice. We slipped and slithered our way back to the hotel on slick pavements – Eddie the Eagle skied past testing his new salopettes and matching bobble hat – and Celil gave us a lift to the station to catch our train at 10 pm, seeing us off with a cheery wave. With a blast of the hooter, the train pulled out of Kars.

Once again, we were on the Turistik Doğu Ekspresi, this time heading west for Ankara.

A note on excursions

Prices (correct as of January 2020) are as follows:

Ani admission: 12 lira per person

Lake Çıldır troika ride: 15 lira per person

Lake Çıldır ice fishing: 35 lira per person

A special thank you

Celil Ersözoğlu was engaged by Amber Travel to act as our guide. We very much enjoyed our time with him. Not only is he an experienced and very knowledgeable English-speaking professional guide, but also easy-going, entertaining and cheerful company, with a ready smile and chuckle. If you ever find yourself in need of a guide in Kars, Celil can be contacted on 0532 226 3966 or at celilani@hotmail.com

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