Central Anatolia

Central Anatolia is the heartland of Turkey, both geographically and culturally. Tribes, races and empires have been fighting over these dusty steppes and hills for centuries, dragging cities from obscurity to prominence, or from prosperity to destruction, sometimes spending decades battling over the same patch of ground. Civilisations were made or broken in the crucible of the Anatolian summer, leaving tantalising glimpses of themselves behind.
Today the evidence of history’s ebbs and flows is laid out all across the region like a giant crime scene, just waiting for the keen-eyed traveller to play detective. Follow the right traces and you’ll find Neolithic settlements rubbing shoulders with Hittite cities, and Seljuk pomp vying with Ottoman glamour, all founded on the forgotten ashes of a hundred more failed invaders.