Bartın

Strawberries and walking sticks Population: 56,000

Old name: Parthenios

Market day: Tuesday

The small inland town of Bartın is not the sort of place many people think of visiting. Instead it usually serves as a hopping off point for getting up to Amasra on the Black Sea coast. If you do have a spare few hours though it’s worth taking a stroll round town to admire some fine restored Ottoman wooden houses and their shabbier but somehow more elegant neighbours.

Visit on market day in the summer and you may have the pleasure of seeing women from local villages who come into town especially to sell their strawberries (çilekler), a wonderfully colourful sight. Otherwise, Bartın is mainly known for the production and sale of wooden bastons (walking sticks).

Other minor attractions include a fine şadırvan (ablutions fountain), a stone-built belediye building and a leafy han with a great tea garden.

The town stands on the Bartın Çayı, once the River Parthenios that marked the boundary between the provinces of Bithynia and Paphlagonia.