Places of Interest - Turkey

Downtown Trabzon and "Hagia Sophia":

Although the city is not very high on the touristmap of Turkey, the city houses many Byzantine and Ottoman buildings, including several (former) churches, the most important of which is the 13th-century Hagia Sophia. The church is clearly influenced by Georgian and Seljuk styles but the beautiful wall drawings and floor mosaics are more reminiscent of the old Constantinople. After 1461 the church was turned into a mosque and later used as an ammunition depot and hospital by the Russians when the conquered the region. In 1960 it was restored and decorated as a museum (3 Lira entrance) - in recent years there are voices from the government to use it again as a mosque that causes a lot of bad blood in the city (and beyond). 

The historic center of Trabzon (the districts of Orta Hisar and Yukari Hisar) still have many old wooden and old stone houses, but also the “lower” streets between the Bazaar district and the central square (Meydan) have retained part of their historic character. For this purpose cars have been abandoned for a large part of the citycenter, where a shopping area has now arisen. Trabzon was one of the first cities in Turkey that did this. In the Bazaar district one finds one of the most beautiful Ottoman mosques in the city, the “Çarşı Cami”. In addition to religious buildings and large residences, there are also some hamams in the city. On a hill above the city is the park Boztepe, with terraces and panoramic views over the city. Among Turkish tourists, the “Atatürk” Köşkü (kiosk) is popular, where the Turkish leader stayed in 1937. This late-19th-century cottage is also on this hill. Recently, the construction of a park has made the large fortress walls of the old city visible again to the public. On the south side of this park, the Byzantine Imaret Aqueduct also runs across the valley and is a interesting sight.  

"Sumela" monastery: see museums (under).  

Other attractions:

Trabzon museum and the “Ataturk” Villa.

Trabzon was founded as the city "Trapezus" in the 8th century BC. by Greek settlers. Two centuries later the city came into the hands of the Persians in the year 334 BC. After that it was conquered by Alexander the Great. In the year 63 BC. the Romans conquered the city. Under Roman rule, the city gained importance because the trade route from the Black Sea to Persia was improved. The city also received a new port, at that time the largest constructed port on the Black Sea. However, due to the decline of the Roman Empire and the local authority, trade routes were under continuous threat from robbers and looters. It was not until the 8th century that the city itself began to grow again when international trade on the Silk Road started again. Trabzon developed as the end point of the northwest branch, from Tabriz in Iran. After the Fourth Crusade Constantinople the Eastern Roman or Byzantine Imperial family moved to the Greek language Trabzon. They founded the Imperial Trebizond that would be ruled by the Comnenen until 1461. With this, the city became in fact the third and last, although very modest, incarnation of Rome. Several buildings were made to honor this name. In addition to Islamic Çepni Turks, other Turkish peoples came to the Empire in the late Middle Ages, such as Jews and Shamanic Kumans and Khazars. Many of them converted to Orthodox Christianity and mixed with the local Greek population. 

In the time of the Latin Empire Trebizonde tried to be the only true representative of the Byzantine imperial dignity, but in the end they were stopped by the emperor of Nicaea Theodorus Lascaris. Later the Turks took the city of “Sinop” and separated the Greek states from each other. Trebizond would then no longer play a role in the politics of the capital. The city, as an independent country, however, it kept his independance a few years longer than the rest of the Byzantine Empire, because it generally maintained good relations with the Turks; after all, several Turkish peoples lived in the empire for several hundred years. Trabzon was also an important place for the Renaissance in the 14th and 15th centuries. During the 15th century, however, the Comnenes sought alternative alliances, and made a covenant with the Ak Koyunlu, the Turkish rulers of Iran, who were in conflict with the Ottomans. This in turn the Ottomans took this as a reason to conquer the Trebizond Empire and to kill the most important people or to have them work for them.

Under the rule of Sultan Mehmed II, more Turkish and other Muslim peoples slowly settled in Trabzon. Due to improved connections with the Caucasus and Iran, the city became an important hub in international trade, and more and more Western Europeans settled in the city too. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 was a heavy blow to the local economy, and tens of thousands of names at the end of the 19th century took a boat to the northern coastal cities of the Black Sea, such as Odessa and Sebastopol. At the same time, tens of thousands of refugees arrived in the city from the North Caucasus, where they were chased away by the Tsar's army. The departure of part of the city's Christian population and the arrival of large numbers of Islamic refugees is worrying Greek and Armenian Christians. During the First World War the city is a scene of battles between the Russians and the Ottomans, as part of the Caucasian front. The Turkish army picks up Armenians who are suspected of conspiring with the Russians. In 1915 the army laid a large part of the Armenian quarter in ruins, and many Armenian men were taken with a boat on the Black Sea and dumped overboard. In 1916, the Russians (together with Armenian troops) took to the city, after which they razed the Turkish and Greek-Islamic neighborhood to the ground as reprisal for the actions of the Turkish army. Due to the Russian Revolution, however, they were forced to withdraw from the entire Caucasus in 1917. After the war, a large part of the lawsuits concerning the Armenian Genocide were conducted in this city. After the Greek-Turkish war it was decided to the Population Exchange between Turkey and Greece which meant that about more than one hundred thousand Christian Pontic Greeks from the region of Trabzon had to be moved. The Greek-speaking Islamic population, however, remained in the area and their language, the Romeyka, has retained the most of ancient Greek from all spoken Greek languages. In the years 60/70 of the 20th century, the city and the region as a whole had an idle period. Many residents left for Europe or one of the cities in western Turkey. With the development of the economy since the 1980s and the arrival of the coastal highway, the city has once again become popular.