Taşova lies in the east of Amasya province, in the valley of the Yeşilırmak. It borders Erbaa in Tokat to the east, the central district of Amasya and Ladik in Samsun to the west, Çarşamba and Asarcık to the north and Turhal to the south. At an altitude of about 240 metres it is the lowest district in the province. About half of its land is forest and scrub, while the fertile strip along the Yeşilırmak, from the district centre to the river's confluence with the Kelkit, is called a little Çukurova for its low altitude and rich soil. The district is therefore a place where farming in the valley and forestry and livestock in the mountain villages go on side by side.
According to official histories, traces of settlement dating to 5000 BC have been found within the district, though illicit digging has destroyed much of the ancient material. The area passed to the Danishmendids in 1075. Seyyid Nurettin, a Rifai sheikh from Khorasan, settled in 1257 at today's Alpaslan and founded a zaviye and endowment there, which survived until 1901. The village's Ottoman bathhouse now houses a municipal museum displaying finds from the Hellenistic to the Ottoman period. In the early years of the Republic the district centre was a village of sixty households called Yemişenbükü, attached to Erbaa. It became a district under the name Taşova on 4 August 1944 and was laid out to a town plan around a wide main avenue; in 1953 it was transferred from Tokat to Amasya.
In the district's early years tobacco and the state monopoly office opened in 1945 carried the economy. Today onions, okra and cereals are the main crops, and the municipality has held the Flower Okra Culture and Arts Festival since 1994. Boraboy Lake, formed when a landslide dammed a stream, was registered as a nature park in 2013. According to TÜİK figures for 2025, the district has 7 neighbourhoods and 63 villages.
