Modern ANKARA is really two cities, a double identity that is due to the breakneck pace at which it has developed since being declared capital of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Until then Ankara - known as Angora - had been a small provincial city, famous chiefly for the production of soft goat's wool. This city still exists, in and around the old citadel that was the site of the original settlement. The other Ankara is the modern metropolis that has grown up around a carefully planned attempt to create a seat of government worthy of a modern, Western-looking state. It's worth visiting just to see how successful this has been, although there's not much else to the place, and the museums and handful of other sights need only detain you for a day or two at most.
The City
Finding your way around Ankara is fairly easy. The city is bisected north-south by Atatürk Bulvari and everything you need is in easy reach of this broad and busy street. At the northern end, Ulus Meydani (known simply as Ulus), a large square and an important traffic intersection marked by a huge equestrian Atatürk statue, is the best jumping-off point for the old part of the city, a village of narrow cobbled streets and ramshackle wooden houses centering on the Hisar, Ankara's old fortress and citadel. It was the Gauls who built the first fortifications on this site, but most of what can be seen today dates from Byzantine times, with substantial Selçuk and Ottoman additions. There are tremendous views of the rest of the city from inside, as well as an unexceptional twelfth-century mosque, the Alâeddin Camii. The Aslanhane Camii and Ali Elvan Camii bazaar areas to the south are more impressive, built by the Selçuks during the thirteenth century, with beautifully carved ceilings supported by wooden columns and intricately carved mihrabs.
Follow Kadife Sokak from here towards the modern city and you come to the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations which boasts an incomparable collection of archeological objects housed in a restored Ottoman bedesten or covered market, but offers frustratingly little in the way of explanation. Hittite carving and relief work form the most compelling section of the museum, mostly taken from Carchemish, near the present Syrian border. There are also Neolithic finds from Çatal Höyük, 52km southeast of Konya, the site of one of Anatolia's oldest settlements and widely regarded as the world's first "city"; early Bronze Age stag figures, pottery and vessels unearthed at Kültepe, near Kayseri; examples of Urartian metalwork; and Phrygian finds from the royal tombs at Gordion.
North of Ulus Meydana is what's left of Roman Ankara, namely the Column of Julian on Hükümet Meydana, erected in honor of a visit to Ankara by Julian the Apostate, who reigned briefly from 361 AD. Close by, the Hacibayram Camii was erected on the ruins of the Temple of Augustus and Rome, built by the Phrygians during the second century BC in honor of Cybele. Today the remains of the temple wall on the square next to the mosque are about all that's left. The Hacabayram Camii itself was built in 1400 by Haca Bayram Veli, the founder of an order of dervishes, whose tomb in front is a popular place of pilgrimage. South down Atatürk Bulvara, the Gençlik Parki was built on the orders of Atatürk to provide a recreational spot for the hard-working citizens of his model metropolis; it features an artificial lake, funfair, cafés and an Opera House near the entrance (Atatürk developed a taste for opera while serving in Sofia in 1905). Further down Atatürk Bulvara, the Ethnography Museum (closed for restoration at the time of writing) boasts rooms used as an office by the great man, as well as the usual collection of folk costumes and Ottoman art and artefacts.
Across the main west-east rail line lays Sihhiye Meydani and the real heart of modern Ankara, which focuses on the large square of Kizilay the main transport hub of the city. A few streets east raise the four minarets of the Kocatepe Camii, a modern mosque built in Ottoman-style that ranks as one of the biggest in the world. Beyond lays Turkey's parliament building, a strip of embassies and the Presidential Palace whose grounds are home to the Çankaya Atatürk Museum. |
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