Amasya Castle and the Rock Tombs of the Pontic Kings

Above the river Yesilirmak, in a sheer cliff directly behind the old quarters, the tombs of the kings of Pontus are cut - the burial places of the Mithridatic dynasty, which ruled from here from the fourth to the first century BC. There are about twenty of them in all, and the five largest stand in a row in the middle of the cliff face: each is a chamber separated from the rock by a corridor running round it, so that the columned facade comes out carved from the monolith. A stairway and a lit path lead up to them, and in the evening the tombs are illuminated and read from the embankment as a row of dark openings above the roofs. Higher up the slope stands the castle with its towers, inhabited since Hittite times and rebuilt by the Romans, the Byzantines and the Ottomans; from its viewing platform the whole city in the gorge is visible. Amasya was the birthplace of the geographer Strabo, who described these very tombs in his Geography.

Address

Çelebi Sk., Nergiz Mahallesi

On the map