The story of tourism in Amasya cannot be understood without the history of the city itself. Founded where the Yeşilırmak passes through a narrow valley, Amasya lies at the point where the roads linking the Black Sea coast to inner Anatolia meet. This position made it a settlement, a capital and a sanjak seat over thousands of years, and most of what visitors see today is a trace of that long duty. The timber houses lined up along both banks of the river, the royal tombs carved into the slope of Mount Harşena, the complexes of the Seljuk and Ottoman periods and the museums are the main assets on which the city's tourism rests. In 2015, the inclusion of Mount Harşena and the Rock Tombs of the Pontic Kings in the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List gave these assets an official and international framework.

The Historical Layers Behind Amasya's Tourism

The mound on the southern slope of Mount Harşena and Amasya Castle were inhabited without interruption from the Early Bronze Age to the end of the Ottoman state. In that time the city hosted the Hittites, Phrygians, Cimmerians, Scythians, Medes and Persians, then the Pontic Kingdom, the Romans and the Eastern Romans, and afterwards the Danishmendids, Anatolian Seljuks, Ilkhanids, Eretnids and Ottomans. The phrase "8,500 years of history", frequently repeated in promotional texts, rests on this long chain of settlement. That so many layers stand one above another in the same valley makes Amasya a city in which many periods can be read at once.

The Pontic Kingdom is among the layers that changed the look of the city most. Mithridates I, one of the Persian satraps, made Amaseia his capital and founded the kingdom there. The document submitted to UNESCO gives the founding date as 301 BCE, while some sources cite 281 BCE. Under Mithridates VI Eupator the kingdom's lands expanded to the present borders of Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Bulgaria and Greece. Eupator's son Pharnakes II was defeated by the Roman commander Caesar at Zela in 47 BCE, and Caesar's "veni, vidi, vici" was spoken after that battle. The castle walls and the rock tombs date from the years in which the city lived its most brilliant days under the Pontic kings.

In the Ottoman period Amasya continued to serve as an administrative centre because of its strategic position on the eastern frontier. The city came under Ottoman control in 1386 and was organized as a prince's sanjak in 1402. Twelve princes served there, and seven of them ascended the throne. The name "City of Princes" comes from this practice and is one of the identities most used in tourism promotion today. Institutions such as the Şehzadeler Museum (Princes Museum) also hold an important place in conveying this heritage to visitors.

The Rock Tombs of the Pontic Kings

The royal tombs on the southern slope of Mount Harşena are regarded as the most impressive archaeological remains to survive from the Pontic Kingdom, and they form nearly the only monumental group of the kingdom's structures to have been preserved. Five kings' tombs lie around the Maiden's Palace (Kızlar Sarayı). They are attributed to Mithridates I, Ariobarzanes, Mithridates II, Mithridates III and Pharnakes I. Inside the walls of Amasya Castle there are nine rock tombs, and in the valley and around the city there are twenty-one in all. The tombs range from 8 to 15 metres in height. Strabo is the first writer to mention them.

In building the tombs, the outer face of the rock was worked, and some parts were also carved separately and fastened to the rock with joints and clamps. Part of the steps, the anta capitals, the thresholds and the door lintels were made this way, and traces of these fastenings can still be made out. The entrances to the burial chambers open high above the ground, so they can be reached only by ladder. The UNESCO document notes that this high position may have been chosen according to Iranian rules of purity and can be compared with the entrances of the Achaemenid tombs at Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rustam. The column arrangements on the facades also differ. Tomb I has six columns, Tombs II and IV have four each, while Tombs III and V have rounded tops and no columns.

During construction it was planned to surround all the tombs with corridors, so that they would look like free-standing buildings within the rock. Only the corridors of Tombs II, III and IV could be completed, however. Work on the corridor of Tomb I was begun but abandoned because the rock was fissured and crumbly. The corridor of Tomb V was left unfinished. The reason was that Pharnakes I decided to move the capital from Amaseia to Sinope, the port city he had conquered not long before and which had international connections, and wished to be buried in his new capital. The tradition of rock tombs thus ended in Amasya and did not continue in Sinope.

Tomb V, belonging to Pharnakes I, is the largest rock tomb of the group, measuring 15 x 8 x 6 metres. The rock inscription above it records that the castle commander (phrourarchos) Metrodoros dedicated an altar and a flower bed to the gods for the king. The tombs are the latest link of the Anatolian rock-tomb tradition, which includes the Urartian, Phrygian, Lycian, Carian and Paphlagonian examples. Whereas in other regions local forms gradually took on a Greek appearance, in Amasya the development ran in the opposite direction. Forms inspired by Greek temple architecture were abandoned entirely in Tomb V and a new type peculiar to the region emerged. The Tomb of Hikesios near Laçin in Çorum is another example that follows this type.

Entry on the UNESCO Tentative List

Mount Harşena and the Rock Tombs of the Pontic Kings were proposed for the Tentative List on 13 April 2015 by Turkey's Permanent Delegation to UNESCO. Some publications give 2014 as the year of inclusion. The property was submitted in the "mixed" category, that is, on both cultural and natural grounds, and criteria (iii), (vi) and (vii) were cited. Entering the Tentative List does not mean that a site is a World Heritage property; it shows that the state may prepare a full nomination dossier in the future. Amasya is therefore at the beginning of a nomination process.

Criterion (iii) holds that the royal necropolis, containing the tombs of five Pontic kings, is the first and only necropolis of a dynasty in the world. Criterion (vi) rests on Amasya's having been an administrative, scientific and cultural centre throughout history. The geographer Strabo (64-24 BCE) spent most of his life here and wrote the seventeen-volume Geographika and the forty-three-volume Historika Hypomnemata. Saint Theodore was born in Amasya in 284. The Tuhfe-i Mübârizî, written in the thirteenth century by Hekim Bereket, is regarded as the first medical book written in Turkish in Anatolia. The Cerrahiyyetü'l-Hâniyye of Sabuncuoğlu Şerefeddin, born in Amasya in 1385, is the first illustrated medical book prepared in the Turkish-Islamic world, and one of its three copies is today in the National Library of France. Sheikh Hamdullah, Zeynep Hatun, Mihrî Hatun, Pir İlyas-ı Halvetî, Gül Baba, Tacizâde Cafer Çelebi, Bayezid Pasha and Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha are also names associated with the city.

Criterion (vii) rests on the cultural landscape. The Yeşilırmak, flowing east to west between mountains reaching two thousand metres, joins the Tersakan Stream at Amasya and forms a broad basin. In the north of the basin rises Mount Harşena, a pointed, cone-shaped limestone mass dated to the Jurassic Period, 272 metres high. Its summit has two flat areas, cliffs fall to the river on the south, and the eastern and western slopes are very steep. This structure turned the mountain into an almost natural fortress and gave the city a defensive advantage. Because of the royal tombs, the area has for centuries also been known as the "Valley of the Kings". The name Harşena is thought to derive from the Hattian Harşuwana or Arşuawana and to mean "beautiful, blessed river city".

The Yalıboyu Houses

The first sight to meet visitors in Amasya is the Yalıboyu houses lined up along the Yeşilırmak. These are examples of traditional Turkish houses built in the 19th and 20th centuries, using the hımış and bağdadi techniques. They mostly rise side by side and attached to one another, on a timber frame with adobe infill; their roofs are hipped or gabled and covered with channelled tiles. Most of the houses have one or two storeys above a basement and are built around courtyards and gardens. Planned on the haremlik and selamlık system, these residences present a closed face to the street, and the garden remains in the middle of the buildings.

On the first or second floor, the part of a room that projects toward the street or courtyard with windows on three sides is called a şahniş; these projections are also known as köşk. Daily life was spent in rooms called sofa. These rooms contain a hearth, a sherbet niche, built-in cupboards, shelves and a sedir (divan seat), and some rooms also have a storage niche and a gusülhane (washing room). The houses were built in the form of a yalı, that is, as mansions, in a geography without a sea, and are enclosed by high walls. The courtyard has a well and a hearth, along with pomegranate, mulberry or jujube trees. The haremlik sections lean against the castle walls along the river.

This view is read together with the buildings on the opposite bank. The Darüşşifa (1309), the Gümüşlü Mosque (1326), the Bayezid II Complex (1486) and the Kapı Ağa Madrasa (1488), together with the historic bridges, the castle and Mount Harşena, form a single whole. Timber houses are not found only at Yalıboyu. In Hatuniye Neighbourhood and in Helkıs Neighbourhood east of the castle, and in the Sofular, Hacı İlyas and Şamlar neighbourhoods across the river, there are also two-hundred-year-old timber buildings. Hatuniye Neighbourhood is an urban conservation area, and 64 of the 137 registered buildings in the city lie within its boundaries. Helkıs Neighbourhood is likewise an urban conservation area with 16 registered traditional timber buildings. These houses are protected under the Law on the Protection of Cultural and Natural Property.

Conservation and Restoration

Mount Harşena is registered as a 1st-degree natural conservation site. The 350,000-square-metre area comprising Mount Harşena, Amasya Castle, the Maiden's Palace area and the Inner Fortress (Enderun) district, including Hatuniye Neighbourhood, is a 1st-degree archaeological site. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism and the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization are responsible for its protection. Survey, restitution and restoration projects for the castle walls were prepared in 2007, and a large part of the walls was later restored. Excavations with Ministry of Culture and Tourism funding were carried out in the Maiden's Palace area and the castle between 2006 and 2008; since 2009 the castle excavations have been conducted by the Department of Art History at Istanbul University. The Ministry has also given financial support to restoration projects for historic buildings in the Hatuniye and Helkıs neighbourhoods and has had the street rehabilitation project for Müftü Kamil Street in Sofular Neighbourhood prepared with the same funding.

The structure of the castle offers visitors a broad area to explore. The castle consists of three main sections and eight levels of defence; the surrounding walls are about two kilometres long and were built in the Ancient, Medieval and Modern ages. In the castle are the 186-metre Dungeon Tunnel, cisterns bearing the traces of different civilizations, and the underground remains of an Ottoman neighbourhood. In the Middle Fortress, besides the royal tombs, there are two Ottoman baths of the 14th and 15th centuries, the Ceylan Road, the 300-metre Cilanbolu Cistern, the Ceylan Tunnel and Hellenistic walls. Part of the Hellenistic walls still stands today. The tunnels and cisterns were opened in the 1st century BCE with the rock-tunnel technique, in vault form, into the bedrock. The Maiden's Palace was used as a military base in the period of the Candaroğulları Beylik and served Ottoman princes and sanjak governors for more than 150 years. The royal tombs and the castle are lit in the evenings, and the view from the valley changes considerably.

Museums and Visitor Numbers

Amasya is described as a city rich in museums in proportion to its population. The Şehzadeler Museum, the Miniature Amasya Museum, the İmaret Museum, the Bimarhane and the Ferhat and Şirin Lovers Museum are among the city's leading museums. The Miniature Amasya Museum opened in 2010. In the garden of the Amasya Archaeological Museum stands the Tomb of Sultan Mesud, dating from the 12th century. At the entrance to the city are the Ferhat and Şirin Lovers Museum and the Ashiks Museum.

The Directorate of Culture and Social Affairs of the Amasya Special Provincial Administration announced that the number of ticketed visitors to the museums in 2018 was 139,980. Of this number, 42,005 belong to the Miniature Amasya Museum, 49,007 to the Şehzadeler Museum and 48,898 to the İmaret Museum. Because the figures for the three museums add up to 139,910, there is a small gap with the announced total. In 2019 the administration said it was aiming for a visitor number well above this, of higher quality. The museums are presented as one of the city's important assets, both for passing the historical panorama on to the future and for revitalizing tourism. The work carried out jointly by the Special Provincial Administration and the municipality has produced an increase in the number of both domestic and foreign tourists.

Amasya's place in the War of Independence has also been added to the cultural route. The circular that Mustafa Kemal Pasha issued in Amasya in 1919 made the city a site of national memory. Historic mosques and tombs are the subject of faith tourism, museums and War of Independence sites of cultural tourism, and the Amasya çörek and regional dishes of gastronomy tourism. Festivals and film shoots are further events that raise the city's profile.

Digital Promotion

In June 2022 the Digital City Amasya Project, carried out under the Central Black Sea Development Agency's Financial Support Programme for Small-Scale Infrastructure Investments for Tourism Development, was presented. Through this project, implemented by the Amasya Special Provincial Administration, a mobile application called "Discover Amasya" and the website discoveramasya.com were developed. The aim was to strengthen Amasya's promotion and tourism potential through new technological tools. The application and the site operate in Turkish and English. Users can discover the city's cultural, historical and natural assets, find food and accommodation suggestions, and view detailed information, photographs and videos about each place.

Another strand of the project is the uniform signs with QR codes prepared to raise the visibility of the city's cultural, historical and natural assets. When the QR code on a sign is scanned with the application, information about the structure in question is displayed. Standardizing the promotional signs contributes to the city's tourism coherence. Together, the signs, the application and the website allow tourists visiting Amasya to use sample itineraries and to put together their own programmes according to their interests.

The Effect of Tourism on the City

Tourism brought movement to the city's economy; handicrafts, accommodation and local products took a share of this revival. The change also has a cultural side. The people of the city came to notice the value of their own heritage anew through the interest of visitors and began to feel more responsibility for protecting it. Entering the Tentative List created both a new responsibility and a new opportunity for Amasya's protection and promotion. Whether the site will enter the permanent list depends on the evaluation of a nomination dossier to be prepared in the future.

Chronology

301 BCE (281 BCE according to some sources): Mithridates I founds the Pontic Kingdom and Amaseia becomes its capital.

47 BCE: Pharnakes II is defeated by Caesar in the Battle of Zela.

1309: The Darüşşifa (Bimarhane) is built.

1326: The Gümüşlü Mosque is built.

1386: Amasya comes under Ottoman control.

1402: The city is organized as a prince's sanjak.

1486: The Bayezid II Complex is built.

1488: The Kapı Ağa Madrasa is built.

2006-2008: Excavations are carried out in the Maiden's Palace and the castle with Ministry funding.

2007: Survey, restitution and restoration projects for the castle walls are prepared.

2009: The castle excavations pass to the Department of Art History at Istanbul University.

2010: The Miniature Amasya Museum opens.

13 April 2015: Mount Harşena and the Rock Tombs of the Pontic Kings are proposed for the UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List.

2018: The number of ticketed visitors to the three museums is announced as 139,980.

June 2022: The Discover Amasya mobile application and website are presented.

Sources

Official sources

Other sources

Online sources