Cityscapes of Turkey
Cityscapes: 82 places from 67 provinces of Turkey. Each has a model-like miniature, a short story and a Numa Made ring on the Isometric Turkey map.
Bosphorus
Can a cow give its name to a sea? It hardly sounds plausible; and yet this is exactly how the story of the Bosphorus begins. In Greek mythology, Zeus turns Io, with whom he has fallen in…
See on the map →Golden Horn and Historic Peninsula
“I am neither within time, / Nor wholly outside it…” says Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. Whenever I read these lines, the Historic Peninsula comes to mind. Walking inside the city walls, you feel…
See on the map →Dolmabahçe & Beşiktaş
“Yesterday I gazed upon you from a hill, beloved Istanbul!” So begins Yahya Kemal’s famous poem. Now, had the poet’s hill been one of the Yıldız slopes, what would we see in the view spread…
See on the map →Galata & Beyoğlu
Have you ever dreamed of taking wing from the top of a tower and flying to the far side of the sea? According to Evliya Çelebi, someone did more than dream it… In the reign of Sultan Murad…
See on the map →Maiden’s Tower & Üsküdar
“On the way to Üsküdar the rain came down, / My clerk’s long coat, its hem all mud…” Is there anyone who hasn’t heard this folk song? I can’t say; but few reach the Üsküdar shore without…
See on the map →Ortaköy & Bosphorus Bridge
How many steps lie between two continents? Until the autumn of 1973, the answer was “one ferry ride”. Anyone wishing to cross from Asia to Europe either waited for a ferry at a pier or…
See on the map →Bebek & Arnavutköy
Herodotus, the father of history, tells how the Persian King Darius crossed the Bosphorus on his campaign against the Scythians: on a bridge built by Mandrocles, an engineer from Samos, who…
See on the map →Çamlıca Hill
Is it possible to see Istanbul at a single glance? With its seven hills, two shores, two seas and millions of people, trying to fit this city into a single frame is like pouring an ocean…
See on the map →Kadıköy & Moda
Legend has it that when Byzas of Megara consulted the oracle at Delphi before setting out to find a new home, he received the answer: “Settle opposite the land of the blind.” When he…
See on the map →Eyüp Sultan & Pierre Loti
How does a French sailor’s name come to be given to a hill in Istanbul? The answer awaits you at the far end of the Golden Horn, where the water slowly narrows and mingles with streams, at…
See on the map →Tophane & Bursa
“An old mosque courtyard in Bursa, / Water chattering in the little fountain…” So begins Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s poem ‘Time in Bursa’. But can time really flow differently in a city? Look…
See on the map →İzmit & the Gulf
When the Roman Emperor Diocletian gave up his throne of his own free will in 305, after a reign of more than twenty years, the world froze in astonishment. An emperor stepping down by…
See on the map →Bilecik
“Let the people live, so that the state may live.” These words, attributed to Sheikh Edebali, have passed from mouth to mouth for centuries as the essence of the art of governing. But did…
See on the map →Selimiye & Edirne
“The Şehzade was my apprenticeship, the Süleymaniye my journeyman’s work, the Selimiye my mastery.” These words are attributed to Mimar Sinan. So what does an architect think about, well…
See on the map →Tekirdağ
“I have come to love Rodosto so much that I cannot forget Zágon.” This sentence belongs to the young Kelemen Mikes, who came into exile in the early 18th century with the Hungarian Prince…
See on the map →Konak & Gulf of Izmir
“The poplars of Izmir, their leaves come falling down…” So begins that slow, solemn zeybek. But why speak of poplars and falling leaves to tell of a city? Perhaps because Izmir is a city…
See on the map →Aydın & Tralleis
“While you live, shine; have no grief at all; life exists only for a short while, and time demands its toll.” These lines are the words of the oldest song to have survived complete to this…
See on the map →Denizli
Can you know a city by the crow of a rooster? For Denizli, our answer is without a doubt yes. Famous for its long, never-ending crow, the Denizli rooster has been opening the mornings of…
See on the map →Uşak
Have you ever wondered where those carpets in Renaissance paintings came from, the ones spread over tables, hung from window sills, laid beneath the feet of saints? A good many of the…
See on the map →Kütahya Castle
“The springs of Kütahya flow and flow…” Hearing this folk song, played to open weddings, you can’t help but picture a castle hill, the streets winding at its foot, and fountains babbling on…
See on the map →Kaleiçi & the Cliffs
Legend has it that one day King Attalus II of Pergamon summoned his men and gave them a single command: “Find me paradise on earth.” It is said that after months of roaming from land to…
See on the map →Isparta & Gölcük
Gertrude Stein’s famous line goes: “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.” But for a city, is the rose just a flower, or is it also a season, a scent, a livelihood, an identity?
See on the map →Mersin
Have you ever wondered why a grammatical error is called a “solecism” in English? The word comes from the ancient city of Soloi, just west of today’s Mersin. Legend has it that the Greek…
See on the map →Seyhan Dam & Adana
In his novel ‘On Fertile Lands’, Orhan Kemal tells the story of three friends who come down from their village to Çukurova to earn their bread. A story of factories, fields, heat and hope…
See on the map →Antakya & Habib-i Neccar
“Why do you weep, my raven-haired love? / This too will come, this too will pass, don’t weep,” says Karacaoğlan. Does any city know these lines as well as Antakya, or has its patience…
See on the map →Osmaniye
What does it take for a plain to find its voice? Perhaps a folk song, perhaps an epic, perhaps a child born on that plain… In 1923, in a corner of this plain, in the village of Hemite in…
See on the map →Kahramanmaraş
“Fear not! The crimson banner waving in these dawns shall never fade,” begins Turkey’s national anthem. But what must a city dare so that a banner never fades? One of the most vivid answers…
See on the map →Ankara Castle & Ulus
“Look at the stones of Ankara, / Look at the tears in my eyes…” So begins that familiar folk song. But have you ever wondered why it asks us to look at the city’s stones rather than its…
See on the map →Çankaya & Atakule
Today, Çankaya brings to mind ministries, embassies and Atakule reaching for the sky. But what would we have seen if we had climbed these same ridges a hundred years ago? Vineyards…
See on the map →Hüseyin Gazi Hill
“Ankara, Ankara, beautiful Ankara / Every luckless soul longs to see you…” Everyone knows these lines. But for anyone longing to see Ankara, where is the best place to see it from? From its…
See on the map →Mevlana & Konya
“Bişnev în ney çün şikâyet mî-koned / Ez cüdâyîhâ hikâyet mî-koned…” The Masnavi opens with this couplet: Listen to this reed how it complains: it is telling a tale of separations… So how…
See on the map →Akşehir
One day Nasreddin Hodja came to a lakeshore with a bowl of yogurt starter and began stirring it into the water. Onlookers asked, “Hodja, what are you doing?” “Making yogurt of the lake.”…
See on the map →Karaman Castle
“From this day on, let no one use any language but Turkish at court, in the dervish lodge, in the palace, in assemblies or on outings.” These words come from the decree Karamanoğlu Mehmet…
See on the map →Niğde
To get to know a city, should you first climb its highest hill, or walk in through its oldest gate? In Niğde there is little need to ask, for the city’s highest place and its oldest are one…
See on the map →Nevşehir Castle
“Come, let us bring some joy to this joyless heart / Let us go, my swaying cypress, come, to Sa‘dâbâd,” says Nedim. This merry poet of the Tulip Era sings of the revels at Sadâbâd, laid out…
See on the map →Kayseri & Its Castle
Which is the greater act of devotion: giving a city’s name to an emperor, or dedicating a hospital to a sister? Kayseri is a city that has known both… Known in antiquity as Mazaka, the city…
See on the map →Mount Ali & Talas
According to Evliya Çelebi, in the reign of Murad IV, Hezarfen Ahmed Çelebi took off from the Galata Tower with contraptions resembling eagle’s wings, crossed the Bosphorus and landed in…
See on the map →Sivas
Imagine three universities opening in one city in the same year… Something that would astonish us even today happened in Sivas in 1271. In that single year the Gök Medrese, the Çifte…
See on the map →Kırşehir & Cacabey
“No one would look upon the Turkish tongue / No heart was ever drawn to the Turks,” says Âşık Paşa in his Garipnâme, written in the fourteenth century. In other words, no one cared for…
See on the map →Kırıkkale
When a city’s name means “broken castle,” you can’t help asking: which castle, when, and who broke it? The story behind the name of Kırıkkale, on the banks of the Kızılırmak, is not fully…
See on the map →Çankırı
On long winter nights in Çankırı, the yaran, circles of friends, would gather; folk songs were sung in turn, talk flowed, and anyone who broke the rules was disciplined with a sweet…
See on the map →Eskişehir & Porsuk
“Come, let us be friends for once, let us make life easy on us / Let us be lovers and loved ones, the earth shall be left to no one,” says Yunus Emre. This dervish poet, who wove Turkish…
See on the map →Bolu & Gölcük
Can a city’s name simply be “city”? Strange as it sounds, that, so the story goes, is exactly what Bolu’s name is. In Roman times this settlement was known as Klaudiopolis, the city of…
See on the map →Düzce & Konuralp
One of history’s greatest commanders spent the last years of his life looking for a refuge. Hannibal of Carthage, hunted relentlessly by Rome, felt a little less safe in every palace that…
See on the map →Zonguldak
Imagine someone working hundreds of meters underground, in a world a few steps wide, lit only by the lamp on their head. Above: the sea, the sky, the gulls; below: darkness, dust, and a sun…
See on the map →Bartın
In the ‘Iliad’, as Homer lists the peoples who rushed to the aid of Troy, he speaks of the Paphlagonians and of their homes along the banks of the river Parthenios. That river is the water…
See on the map →Karabük
Can a city be born from a factory? Karabük’s story is the finest answer to that question. In the mid-1930s this was a quiet village of a few houses where two streams meet; there was neither…
See on the map →Kastamonu Castle
At the end of the summer of 1925, Mustafa Kemal came to Kastamonu and appeared before the people with a hat in his hand. Many of those gathered in the streets that day perhaps did not fully…
See on the map →Samsun
“I landed at Samsun on the 19th day of May, 1335.” Nutuk opens with this plain sentence. No ornament, no exaggeration; only a date, a city and a verb… So why was one of history’s most…
See on the map →Amasya & Royal Rock Tombs
Strabo, the great geographer of antiquity, does not forget the city of his birth in ‘Geographika’, his account of the known world. He describes Amaseia as a city built in a deep valley on…
See on the map →Tokat Castle
Patterns pressed onto cloth with wooden blocks… Tokat’s printed yazma scarves have been stamped by master hands with the same patience for centuries; each block carries a flower, a leaf, a…
See on the map →Çorum
How does a chickpea become leblebi? The answer seems simple: by roasting it over a fire. But the truth is otherwise; the chickpea is roasted, rested, roasted again, rested again… In this…
See on the map →Boztepe & Ordu
“If only Ordu’s streams would flow, would flow uphill…” So begins that folk song sung with the horon dance. No one has ever seen water flow uphill, of course; yet riding the cable car up…
See on the map →Trabzon & Boztepe
“Take my camel, dear,” said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass… Rose Macaulay’s novel ‘The Towers of Trebizond’ opens with this sentence and…
See on the map →Rize
“Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage.” Okakura Kakuzō opens ‘The Book of Tea’ with this sentence. The Japanese writer was telling of tea’s long journey through the East; he…
See on the map →Artvin & Çoruh Valley
Someone arriving in Artvin for the first time asks not where the city was built, but how it holds on. On the slopes of the deep canyon cut by the Çoruh, houses climb upward, standing on one…
See on the map →Gümüşhane
If a city is named after a metal, does the metal’s worth pass to the city, or is the city’s fate bound to the mine? Looking at Gümüşhane, the “house of silver”, there is a little truth in…
See on the map →Bayburt Castle
As Dede Korkut tells it, Bamsı Beyrek was ambushed on his wedding night, taken captive, and held prisoner in the fortress of Bayburt for sixteen long years. While his beloved Banu Çiçek…
See on the map →Erzurum
“Erzurum, its bazaar and market…” So begins Sarı Gelin. Sung all across the Caucasus, each people in its own language, this folk song always leads back to the same bazaar. So at which…
See on the map →Erzincan
A city built between two mountains: which one does it feel closer to? To the south, the snowy ridges of Munzur; to the north, the sheer wall of the Keşiş Mountains. In the middle of the…
See on the map →Tunceli
When two rivers meet, which one yields its name to the other? In Tunceli the answer is clear: the Pülümür River comes down from the north to join the Munzur and carries on under the name…
See on the map →Bingöl
Does a city’s memory change when its name does? Bingöl, which older generations knew as Çapakçur, is a good reason to ask… Today the city, named for the thousand lakes (bin göl) in its…
See on the map →Harput & Elazığ
Can a castle be kneaded with milk? Ask this in Harput and they will smile and tell you the story of the Milk Castle… Legend has it that when the castle was being built, a great drought…
See on the map →Malatya & Beydağı
Can a city have a color? Those who visit Malatya in midsummer answer without hesitation: orange… Apricots laid out in the sun on rooftops, in courtyards and in gardens all but paint the…
See on the map →Perre & Adıyaman
How many times can a city change its name, and how much of the old one does it remember in each new name? Ancient Perre, spread over the slopes of the village of Pirin right beside…
See on the map →Ağrı
“Drop by drop, a lake is made,” say our forebears; so too with rivers. We always picture the source of a river like the Euphrates, which has carried civilizations, somewhere grand; yet more…
See on the map →Iğdır & the North Face of Mount Ağrı
Can a mountain have two faces? It can; and two faces that look nothing alike… From Doğubayazıt, Ağrı is seen from atop a high plateau, beyond a wide plain. From Iğdır, however, an entirely…
See on the map →Kars Castle
“The silence of snow, thought the man sitting just behind the bus driver.” With this sentence Orhan Pamuk opens his novel ‘Snow’, in Turkish ‘Kar’, bringing his hero Ka to a city beneath…
See on the map →Ardahan Castle
The three sanjaks… In the last years of the Ottoman Empire, these words referred to Kars, Ardahan and Batum: Elviye-i Selâse. Ceded to Russian rule in 1878, these three cities lived apart…
See on the map →Van Castle
“Van in this world, faith in the next.” This saying of the people of Van is perhaps the most concise expression of a city’s confidence in itself. So what can a city offer in this world to…
See on the map →Bitlis Castle
“Five minarets in Bitlis, come this way, come this way…” The first line of this folk song shows how few words it takes to describe a city: five minarets and a call… So why would a city…
See on the map →Muş & Mount Kurtik
“There’s no cloud in the sky, what is this smoke? / No one has died in the quarter, what is this wailing?…” This folk song, a lament for the soldiers who went to Yemen and never returned…
See on the map →Hakkari & Mount Sümbül
In Ferit Edgü’s novel, later known as ‘A Season in Hakkari’, a teacher spends a winter in a remote village among the mountains. Snow, solitude, mountains and people… Edgü’s spare, short…
See on the map →Gaziantep Castle
Where do you think a city’s soul is kept: in its walls, its bazaars, or at its table? Put this question to Gaziantep and the answer would surely be all three; but it’s not hard to guess it…
See on the map →Kilis
Can you know a city by its scent? Approaching Kilis, before the city itself comes into view, olive groves line both sides of the road: silvery leaves, gnarled trunks, row upon row of…
See on the map →Diyarbakır Walls & Hevsel
“I want a homeland / Where the sky is blue, the branch green, the field yellow; / Where birds of every kind fill its gardens…” says Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı, the poet from Diyarbakır. Reading…
See on the map →Çermik
“O eye, sprinkle no tears on the fires within my heart; / For water is no cure for fires that blaze like these,” says Fuzûlî in his famous Ode to Water. The poet begs his eyes not to shed…
See on the map →Mardin
In how many languages does a city dream? Walking Mardin’s narrow streets, you can’t help asking; for in the same street an Arabic greeting, a Kurdish song, a Syriac prayer and a Turkish…
See on the map →Batman
Imagine a city mentioned with a smile all over the world because it shares its name with a comic-book hero… Most people who hear of Batman for the first time are surprised, then curious…
See on the map →Siirt
Sometimes what best captures a city’s identity is a minaret, sometimes a dish. In Siirt, it is both… While the minaret of the Grand Mosque, rising at the top of the city, vies with the sky…
See on the map →Şırnak
Can a city’s name tell its story? According to a tale often told to visitors to Şırnak, the city’s name comes from “Şehr-i Nuh”, that is, “the city of Noah”. This, they say, was one of the…
See on the map →Cizre & the Tigris
Have you ever imagined that a love story could become a city’s destiny? In Cizre, this question is spoken together with the names of Mem and Zin. Put into verse by Ahmed-i Hânî in the 17th…
See on the map →
Provinces with this kind of place
- Adana1 place
- Adıyaman1 place
- Ağrı1 place
- Amasya1 place
- Ankara3 places
- Antalya1 place
- Ardahan1 place
- Artvin1 place
- Aydın1 place
- Bartın1 place
- Batman1 place
- Bayburt1 place
- Bilecik1 place
- Bingöl1 place
- Bitlis1 place
- Bolu1 place
- Bursa1 place
- Çankırı1 place
- Çorum1 place
- Denizli1 place
- Diyarbakır2 places
- Düzce1 place
- Edirne1 place
- Elazığ1 place
- Erzincan1 place
- Erzurum1 place
- Eskişehir1 place
- Gaziantep1 place
- Gümüşhane1 place
- Hakkari1 place
- Hatay1 place
- Iğdır1 place
- Isparta1 place
- Istanbul10 places
- Izmir1 place
- Kahramanmaraş1 place
- Karabük1 place
- Karaman1 place
- Kars1 place
- Kastamonu1 place
- Kayseri2 places
- Kırıkkale1 place
- Kırşehir1 place
- Kilis1 place
- Kocaeli1 place
- Konya2 places
- Kütahya1 place
- Malatya1 place
- Mardin1 place
- Mersin1 place
- Muş1 place
- Nevşehir1 place
- Niğde1 place
- Ordu1 place
- Osmaniye1 place
- Rize1 place
- Samsun1 place
- Siirt1 place
- Sivas1 place
- Şırnak2 places
- Tekirdağ1 place
- Tokat1 place
- Trabzon1 place
- Tunceli1 place
- Uşak1 place
- Van1 place
- Zonguldak1 place