#73 best destination in the world
Cappadocia
- Occupied in 499 BC
- Characterized by its fairy chimneys, a rock that protrudes from the bottom of an arid drainage basin or badland
Van Fortress
- Massive stone fortification built by the ancient Armenian kingdom of Urartu
- Built in 750 BC
- Used for regional control rather than against foreign armies
- One of the oldest buildings in the world
Göreme
- Town located among fairy chimney rock formations in Cappadocia
- Population 2,000 people
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
- Possibly settled during the Hittite era, 1800-1200 BC
- Natives escaped political turmoil by using the tunnels in the rock
Hattusa
- Capital of the Hittite Empire in the late Bronze Age
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
Pamukkale
- Ancient city located on hot springs used as a spa since the 2nd century BC
- Also contained a bath, library, and gymnasium
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
Istanbul
- Historically known as Constantinople and Byzantium
- On the cusp of what separates Europe and Asia
- Largest European city
- Founded in 660 BC
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
Süleymaniye Mosque
- Ottoman imperial mosque in Istanbul
- One of the best-known sites in Istanbul
Sultanahmet, Fatih
- Neighborhood in Istanbul
Hagia Sophia
- Was a Greek Orthodox Christian patriarchal basilica
- Later, it was an imperial mosque
- Now a museum in Istanbul
- Constructed from 537-1453
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
Sultan Ahmed Mosque
- Mosque constructed from 1609-1616 during the rule of Ahmed I
- Contains Ahmed’s tomb, a madrasah, and a hospice
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
Topkapı Palace
- In the 15th century, served as the main residence and administrative headquarters of the Ottoman sultans
- Construction began in 1459, ordered by Mehmed the Conqueror, six years after the conquest of Constantinople
- Major renovations were done after the 1509 earthquake and the 1665 fire
- After the 17th century, Topkapı gradually lost its importance
- The sultans of that period preferred to spend more time in their new palaces along the Bosphorus
- Following the end of the Ottoman Empire in 1923, Topkapı was transformed into a museum by a government decree
- The museum collection includes Ottoman clothing, weapons, armor, miniatures, religious relics, and illuminated manuscripts like the Topkapi manuscript
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
Basilica Cistern
- Largest of several hundred ancient cisterns that lie beneath the city of Istanbul (formerly Constantinople)
- The cistern, on the historical peninsula of Sarayburnu, was built in the 6th century during the reign of Byzantine Emperor Justinian I
Lycia
- Was a geopolitical region in Anatolia in what are now the provinces of Antalya and Muğla
- Known to history since the records of ancient Egypt and the Hittite Empire in the Late Bronze Age, it was populated by speakers of the Luwian language group
- Written records began to be inscribed in stone in the Lycian language (a later form of Luwian) after Lycia’s involuntary incorporation into the Achaemenid Empire in the Iron Age
- In the later stages of the Roman republic Lycia came to enjoy freedom as a Roman protectorate
- After the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, Lycia was under the Ottoman Empire, and was inherited by the Turkish Republic on the fall of that empire
- The Greek and Turkish population was exchanged when the border between Greece and Turkey was negotiated in 1923
Troy
- Was a city known in late Classical antiquity as Asia Minor, now known as Anatolia in modern Turkey
- It was the setting of the Trojan War described in the Greek Epic Cycle, in particular in the Iliad, one of the two epic poems attributed to Homer
- In 1865, English archaeologist Frank Calvert excavated trial trenches in a field he had bought from a local farmer at Hisarlik
- These excavations revealed several cities built in succession
- Schliemann, a wealthy German businessman and archaeologist, was at first skeptical about the identification of the site Hisarlik with Troy
- Troy VII has been identified with the city called Wilusa by the Hittites and is generally identified with Homeric Troy
- Today, the hill at Hisarlik has given its name to a small village near the ruins
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
Göbekli Tepe
- Archaeological site of a tell (artificial mound)
- The tell includes two phases of use, believed to be of a social or ritual nature by the site discoverer and excavator, dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BC
- Circles of massive T-shaped stone pillars were erected, the world’s oldest known megaliths
- More than 200 pillars in about 20 circles are currently known
- Each pillar has a height of up to 20 ft and weighs up to 10 tons
- They are fitted into sockets that were cut with a tool out of the bedrock
- The site was abandoned and younger structures date to classical times
- The details of the structure’s function remain a mystery and large parts still remain unexcavated
- UNESCO World Heritage Site
Costs
all flights $1,600
food $5/day x 18 days = $94
hotel $16/day x 17 days = $272
tickets (all attractions) $243
TOTAL for whole itinerary $2,209