Central Anatolia – an overview
İstanbul and the coast aside, Central Anatolia is probably the most visited part of Turkey, mainly because of Cappadocia, the centre of the region and an area of extraordinary natural beauty, its dramatic landscape shaped by wind and rain working away on ancient volcanic materials. People come here in their thousands to view the myriad rock-cut churches and underground cities, and to stay in boutique hotels housed in caves.
But great swathes of Central Anatolia go virtually unvisited despite the presence of a sequence of very Turkish, very inviting towns – – Kastamonu, Amasya, Tokat and Sivas – – ringing the north of the capital, Ankara.
Ankara itself is a busy, built-up city blessed with a fine museum. North of Ankara the country’s best Hittite sites at Hattuşa and Yazılıkaya are a designated world heritage site, while to the south-west Konya is world-famous as the burial place of Mevlana.
Getting there
Although there are overnight buses from İstanbul to Cappadocia, most visitors perfer to fly either to Kayseri or to Nevşehir and then take a pre-booked transfer to Ürgüp, Avanos, Göreme or Uçhisar. Planes and high-speed trains connect İstanbul to Ankara whence comfortable buses fan out all over the country from the enormous AŞTİ bus terminal.
The hits
Cappadocia is one of those places likely to feature on lists of places to see before you die. Spread out over a vast triangle with its points at Aksaray, Kayseri and Niğde, it’s the region famous for the fairy chimneys, conical rock formations that were until recently homes for the locals. The main official attractions are the Göreme Open Air Museum, where a cluster of rock-cut churches are decorated with frescoes dating back to the Middle Ages, and the underground cities at Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı but this is also a perfect area for those who want to walk or ride in the surrounding valleys or float over them in a hot-air balloon. The main centres – Göreme, Uçhisar, and Ürgüp – – offer all the services a visitor could ask for in terms of shops, restaurants, Turkish baths, and transport choices. For those with limited time tours run to the lovely Ilhara and Soğanlı Gorges. You’ll be spoilt for choice when it comes to boutique hotels – there are more of them here than in any other part of the country except İstanbul and Bodrum.
Increasingly popular with Turkish visitors, Kastamonu is little known to foreign visitors despite having a beautiful location in a dip between two hills, plenty of medieval and Ottoman attractions, and a choice of pleasing and not too expensive boutique hotels. A little way out of town in the village of Kasaba you’ll find one of the country’s finest surviving and most colourful wooden mosques.
Straddling the banks of the Yeşilırmak, Amasya is a lovely, compact town with Ottoman houses overhanging the river and a plethora of historic mosques and medreses (theological schools). Once the capital of the pre-Roman Pontic Kingdom, it’s also blessed with some very picturesque rock-cut tombs. Many of the houses have been converted into boutique hotels.
Not as immediately appealing as Amasya, Tokat is still a fascinating town with one street (Sulu Sokak) littered with the shatttered remnants of medieval medreses and hans. It’s also home to the Latifoğlu Konağı, a magnificent 18th-century house open to the public. Tokat more than makes up for what it lacks in the way of interesting hotels with restaurants serving the mouth-watering Tokat kebab, chunks of lamb interspersed with tomato, onion and aubergine that have been marinaded in its juices.
A town with a large Alevi population, Sivas is blessed with the remains of several medreses with magnificent portals, most of them now serving as tea gardens ringed with shops. The local museum is housed inside a school which was the venue for one of the planning meetings for the Turkish War of Independence. It’s a long day trip east to visit the 13th-century mosque and hospital complex at Divriği which is one of Turkey’s world heritage sites. Accommodation in Divriği is unexpectedly wanting; be sure to allow time to return to Sivas for the night.
The turquoise-domed shrine of Mevlana in Konya is one of Turkey’s truly iconic sites, and most people are very moved by a building which is always thronged with reverent visitors paying their respects to the founder of the whirling dervishes. Aside from this, Konya is home to a trio of museums housed in fine old medreses left over from the days when this was the capital of the Selçuk Kingdom of Rum, as well as to the glorious 13th-century Alaadin Mosque on Alaadin Tepesi (Hill). In a notoriously conservative town, local hotels cater for the teetotal. Restaurants do a fine line in tandır kebabs, super-succulent chunks of lamb resting on a bed of squidgy pide bread.
Without your own transport, the group of Hittite monuments dotted around Çorum are not especially easy to get to. For lovers of the dim and distant past, however, they will be a must, especially the remains of the walled city of Hattuşa, once the capital of the Hittite Empire. Within walking distance at Yazılıkaya carvings of the Hittite gods march along the walls of a ravine. Accommodation is in the village of Boğazköy where you should be able to arrange transport to a third site at Alacahöyük that predates even the Hittites.
The misses
Actually, it depends on how you look at it. If time is short and you don’t like big towns, then Ankara is somewhere that can be bypassed easily. On the other hand the most important finds from all Turkey’s major archaeological sites are housed in the wonderful Museum of Anatolian Civilisations on the slopes of the hill leading up to the attractive Kale (Castle) and the newly restored Samanpazarı, where antique shops are interspersed with small and inviting cafes. The Ulus area at the bottom of the hill is also home to buildings that played a big role in the early days of the Turkish Republic. Finally Ankara makes the most obvious base for day trips out to the enormous Phrygian tomb at Gordion and to the “little Safranbolu” of Beypazarı whose Saturday market retails a colourful mix of organic produce and fabric that locals wear as shawls but that also make perfect tablecloths. Aside from the Divan Hotel facing the Kale, Ankara lacks much in the way of interesting accommodation. Beypazarı, though, has some very authentic Ottoman-house hotels.
Like Ankara, Kayseri is somewhere to axe from tight timetables since much of it is a modern concrete jungle. With time to spare, you might want to explore the area around the big basalt walls ringing its historic heart where several mosques and medreses date back to Selçuk times. The covered bazaar is a calmer version of İstanbul’s Kapalı Çarşı, while the Güpgüpoğlu Konağı shows off the splendour in which wealthy 19th-century Kayserilis expected to live.
…and the hidden treasures
It’s a mystery why so few visitors bother with Karaman, an attractive small town gathered around a castle and boasting several fine medieval mosques and medreses, particularly the 15th-century İbrahim Bey İmaret Medrese. From here you can grab a taxi to visit the cluster of ruined sixth-century stone churches on a remote hillside at Binbirkilise (1001 Churches). Accommodation? As limited as the number of visitors.
North-east of Ankara on the road to Kastamonu, Çankırı falls below virtually everyone’s radar which is a great shame since it turns out to have a lovely old Ottoman core full of houses that are gradually being restored. A short way out of town you can drive into a vast salt mine that may have been in operation since Hittite times, an awe-inspiring experience.
These days some of the sights of Cappadocia receive too many visitors, especially in high summer. Not so the rock-cut monastery at Eski Gümüşler on the outskirts of Niğde where the frescoes are especially well preserved after long years of concealment behind a farmer’s grain stores.
