Ephesus, Hevsel Gardens and Diyarbakır Fortress are now in UNESCO world heritage list!

Turkey is a very rich country by means of natural beauty, history and culture. Turkey is rewarded by this combination and the prize is given by UNESCO!

UNESCO’s world heritage committee aims to identify the places being of special cultural or physical significance.

Turkey has already  13 sites marked on the list. (You may see at the end of this post). In 2015, Ephesus, Hevsel Gardens and Diyarbakır Fortress were nominated and they have been selected with total consensus.

Let’s have a closer look at this special places:

1- Ephesus

New York, London, Tokyo, Berlin… These are great cities of the modern world. Ephesus was one of the greatest cities of the old world, which hosts one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world: Temple of Artemis.

Ephesus was an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Asia Minor, near present-day Selçuk, Izmir Province, Turkey. It was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League during the Classical Greek era. In the Roman period, Ephesus had a population of more than 250,000 in the 1st century BC, which also made it one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean world. Click to read more from our article “The Ancient Metropolis: Ephesus”

2- Hevsel Gardens

Hevsel Gardens is a very interesting place and maybe one of the oldest gardens in the world. The gardens are 8,000-year-old and it is located on an escarpment of the Upper Tigres River Basin that is part of the so-called “Fertile Crescent”. Hevsel Gardens, a green link between the city and the Tigris that supplied the city with food and water for long ages and it is still being protected.

You may be surprised that only one year ago, the Turkish government was pushing Hevsel Garden’s to be zoned for housing. Their plan was to build many villas there. Thanks to god this crazy plan was stopped by environmental activists and this year it is insured by UNESCO’s decision.

3- Diyarbakır Fortress

 

Diyarbakır Fortress is an archaic structure build a very long time ago. Some researches say the citadel and fortress were built approximately 9.000 years ago, some say 5 – 7 thousand years ago. The upgraded fortress mainly built-in Roman and Byzantium era and made Diyarbakır as a stronghold in the south-east of the empire. The fortress walls are about 5.8 km long and have sixteen keeps. The walls today are 10-12 m high and 3-5 m thick and visible in the city. You may also get an aerial view from all over the nearby hills.

Bonus: List of World Heritage Sites in Turkey (from wikipedia)