Places to visit in Ankara
12 places from Ankara province are on the map: Ankara Castle & Ulus, Anıtkabir, Çankaya & Atakule, Duatepe (Polatlı), Mount Mangal (Haymana), Elmadağ, and 6 more. Each has a model-like miniature, a short story and a Numa Made ring on Isometric Turkey.
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 →Anıtkabir
“Seeing me does not necessarily mean seeing my face. If you understand and feel my ideas and my feelings, that is enough.” Every time I read these words of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, I think…
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 →Duatepe (Polatlı)
“There is no line of defense; there is a surface of defense. That surface is the whole homeland. Not an inch of the homeland may be abandoned until it is soaked with the blood of its…
See on the map →Mount Mangal (Haymana)
“Galloping from farthest Asia / and jutting into the Mediterranean like a mare’s head, / this country is ours,” says Nazım Hikmet in his poem ‘Invitation’. Right in the middle of that…
See on the map →Elmadağ
Anyone who knows Ankara’s winters knows this: the frost cuts to the bone, and when the snow falls the steppe sinks into a white silence. But have you ever wondered why the mountain rising…
See on the map →Lakes Eymir & Mogan
“Ankara has no sea,” people like to tease those from the capital. Ankarans pay the jibe little mind; for south of the city, in the middle of the steppe, they have two lakes of their own…
See on the map →Beypazarı
Say Beypazarı, and some of us think of carrots, some of mineral water, and some of its famous kurusu, the town’s dry rusk. But did you know that one of this little town’s true treasures is…
See on the map →Kızılcahamam & Soğuksu
“Water flows, the Turk watches,” our ancestors say. Visitors to Kızılcahamam tweak the saying a little: here water doesn’t just flow, it wells up warm from the earth; and those who watch…
See on the map →Gordion
How do you undo a knot that no one has ever undone? Do you work at it patiently, loop by loop, or with a single stroke of the sword? In 333 BC, when a young commander came to Gordion, the…
See on the map →Nallıhan Colorful Hills
If a painter tipped his palette over a mountainside, what kind of landscape would appear? White beside red, green beside white, yellow beneath green… You can find the answer in Nallıhan, on…
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 →
