Sinop Fortress

Sinop Fortress wraps around the isthmus on which the town stands. Greek Sinope was founded by settlers from Miletus, and the first walls appeared here in antiquity, but the present fortifications took shape later: they were extended and repaired under the Romans, the Byzantines and the Seljuks, and after Sultan Alaeddin Keykubad took the town at the beginning of the thirteenth century the fortress acquired almost its final form. The walls run about two kilometres in total, rising in places to twenty-five or thirty metres with a thickness of several metres. The northern stretch faces the open sea and is the most ruined: the waves have undercut the masonry for centuries, a mole had to be piled up along the shore, and the towers stand half-collapsed right on the rocks by the water. On the town side the wall has survived far better, a clock tower has been set on it, and a small park has been laid out at its foot, from which the loopholes and the traces of later rebuilding are clearly visible. The fortress is on the tentative list for World Heritage. Of the former entrances only two gates survive, Lonca and Kumkapi; the other openings were cut through or blocked up later.

Address

Alan Sk., Sinop

On the map