Few corners of the world harbour the remains of as many ancient civilisations as eastern Turkey, said William Dalrymple in the Financial Times.
The region is suffused with a sense of “beauty in wreckage”, which instils in the visitor feelings “both of wonder and of melancholy”.
The historical layers are most deep and rich around Urfa, in the south, but a tour might begin further north, where the landscape is strewn with the ruins of “astonishingly lovely” old Armenian churches. Several, still adorned with radiant frescoes, lie in the ruins of Ani, a city that was one of the world’s largest in the 10th and 11th centuries, when it thrived under Armenia’s Bagratid kings.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Its remaining “domes, cupolas and spires” rise above a “plunging” gorge on a vast, lonely steppe next to the Armenian border. Many Armenian monuments in Turkey were destroyed during the genocide of 1915-1917, and across the following decades. Among them were four churches in the gorge of Khtzkonk, 15 miles from Ani.
One church still stands there, however – the 10th-century rotunda of Saint Sergius, a “gorgeously sophisticated” piece of architecture in an exquisite setting, rampant with wildflowers. And in recent years, attitudes have shifted. The wondrous church of Akdamar, on an island in Lake Van, has been “beautifully restored”, as has the last remaining Armenian church at Diyarbakır.
From that city, with its magnificent Roman walls, you might head south to Urfa and nearby Gaziantep, at the “crossroads” of the Turkish, Syrian, Iraqi and Iranian worlds. Near Urfa lies Göbekli Tepe – one of 12 local sites dating from 7,000 to 9,000BC, which are the world’s oldest-known human settlements. Carvings of leopards and boars “conjure up a dark epoch of ancient history, fascinating but feral”. At the museum in Urfa, they stand in counterpoint with later artefacts, such as the sculptures of the classical galleries – a “marble world of pristine stillness” in which the “sense of elegy” is at its strongest.
-
‘The West needs people’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
Filing statuses: What they are and how to choose one for your taxesThe Explainer Your status will determine how much you pay, plus the tax credits and deductions you can claim
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibitionThe Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
Nan Goldin: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency – an ‘engrossing’ exhibition
The Week Recommends All 126 images from the American photographer’s ‘influential’ photobook have come to the UK for the first time
-
American Psycho: a ‘hypnotic’ adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis classicThe Week Recommends Rupert Goold’s musical has ‘demonic razzle dazzle’ in spades
-
Properties of the week: houses near spectacular coastal walksThe Week Recommends Featuring homes in Cornwall, Devon and Northumberland
-
Melania: an ‘ice-cold’ documentaryTalking Point The film has played to largely empty cinemas, but it does have one fan
-
Nouvelle Vague: ‘a film of great passion’The Week Recommends Richard Linklater’s homage to the French New Wave
-
Wonder Man: a ‘rare morsel of actual substance’ in the Marvel UniverseThe Week Recommends A Marvel series that hasn’t much to do with superheroes
-
Is This Thing On? – Bradley Cooper’s ‘likeable and spirited’ romcomThe Week Recommends ‘Refreshingly informal’ film based on the life of British comedian John Bishop
-
A Shellshocked Nation: Britain Between the Wars – history at its most ‘human’The Week Recommends Alwyn Turner’s ‘witty and wide-ranging’ account of the interwar years
