Central Anatolia · Turkey
The capital almost no visitor stops in, holding the one museum that explains everything else in Turkey.
Photo: Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and one of the least-visited capitals in Europe or Asia. Most itineraries treat it as a change of trains between Istanbul and Cappadocia, which is a mistake for one specific reason: the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations. It sits inside a restored fifteenth-century Ottoman covered market, and it holds the finds from Çatalhöyük, from the Hittite capital at Hattusa, from the Assyrian merchant colonies at Kültepe and from Phrygian Gordion. Nothing else in the country lets you see, in two hours, the ten thousand years that everything else in Turkey is built on top of.
The city itself is a deliberate creation. When the republic was declared in 1923 the capital was moved here from Istanbul — inland, defensible, and pointedly not Ottoman — and a provincial town of a few tens of thousands was rebuilt as a modern administrative capital by German and Austrian planners. That history is legible in the wide boulevards, the ministries, and above all in Anıtkabir, the mausoleum built for Atatürk between 1944 and 1953, which is less a tomb than a statement of what the republic thought it was.
Underneath all of that there is a much older Ankara: a Byzantine and Seljuk citadel on a rock above the city, its walls built from recycled Roman columns and inscribed blocks, with a neighbourhood of Ottoman houses inside it. Below the castle stands a temple of Augustus whose walls carry the fullest surviving copy of the Res Gestae — the emperor's own account of his reign, written to be read across the empire, and still legible here.
Why visit
Ankara is not a beautiful city, and its case does not rest on charm. It rests on three or four things that exist nowhere else.
Named European Museum of the Year in 1997, and the single most useful two hours in Turkey. Neolithic Çatalhöyük, Hattian gold, Assyrian clay tablets, Hittite reliefs and Phrygian bronzes, laid out chronologically inside an Ottoman bedesten.
Atatürk's mausoleum, approached along a road lined with Hittite-style lions, is where the republic tells its own story. Turkish families come in enormous numbers, and watching them is as instructive as the building.
The Temple of Augustus and Rome carries the Res Gestae Divi Augusti in Latin and Greek — the most complete surviving copy anywhere of the emperor's summary of his own achievements, still on the wall where it was cut.
Gordion, capital of Phrygia and home of the Gordian Knot, is 90 km west and now a UNESCO site. Hattusa, the Hittite capital, is 200 km east with its lion gate and rock sanctuary. Both are day trips.
High-speed trains reach Istanbul in about four and a half hours and Konya in under two. If you are moving between the coast, Cappadocia and Istanbul by train, Ankara is where the network crosses.
Main attractions
Ankara's sights divide neatly: the citadel hill in Ulus holds the ancient city and the museums, and Anıtkabir sits on its own hill to the south-west.
Housed in a fifteenth-century covered bazaar and han beneath the castle. Galleries run from Palaeolithic through Neolithic Çatalhöyük — including the seated goddess and reconstructed wall paintings — to Hattian, Assyrian, Hittite, Phrygian, Urartian and classical material.
Tip Two hours minimum, and go early in your Turkish trip rather than late. Everything you see afterwards makes more sense.
Atatürk's mausoleum, completed in 1953: a ceremonial approach lined with twenty-four Hittite-style lions, a vast plaza, the colonnaded hall of honour, and a museum of the War of Independence with panoramic battle paintings beneath it.
Tip Free. Time your arrival for the hourly changing of the guard, and allow an hour for the underground museum most visitors skip.
A citadel on the rock above Ulus with Byzantine and Seljuk walls built from reused Roman masonry, enclosing a lane-and-courtyard neighbourhood of Ottoman houses, some restored as cafés and carpet shops.
Tip Walk the outer walls for the view over the whole plateau city. The steep lanes are cobbled and uneven — sensible shoes.
A Roman temple of the first century BC whose walls carry the Res Gestae Divi Augusti in Latin and Greek — the emperor's own record of his reign. It stands directly beside the Hacı Bayram mosque and tomb.
Tip Free and open to the street. The Greek text is on the outer side wall, the Latin inside the entrance.
The tomb of Hacı Bayram Veli, a fifteenth-century Sufi teacher, and one of the most visited pilgrimage sites in Turkey. Busy every day with worshippers, and the surrounding square is full of stalls.
Tip An active religious site immediately next to a Roman temple — dress modestly and be discreet with photographs.
An industrial and transport museum in the Çengelhan, an Ottoman caravanserai of 1522 below the castle — engines, cars, scientific instruments and a reconstructed early Ankara shopfront street.
Tip A good hour, and unexpectedly excellent for children. The courtyard café is the nicest stop on the castle hill.
Ninety kilometres west near Polatlı: the Phrygian capital where Alexander is said to have cut the Gordian Knot, with a great burial mound whose wooden chamber is among the oldest standing timber structures anywhere. UNESCO-listed in 2023.
Tip You can walk inside the tumulus. Do the Ankara museum first — most of the finds from here are in it.
Two hundred kilometres east, the Hittite capital: several kilometres of city walls on a hillside, the Lion Gate, a tunnel through the ramparts, and the open-air rock sanctuary at Yazılıkaya with its procession of carved gods.
Tip A long day — three hours each way — and you need a car or a tour. The site is spread out and involves real walking.
Things to do
Two days covers Ankara comfortably. A third buys you a Bronze Age capital.
Work through the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations chronologically, from the Çatalhöyük rooms to the Hittite reliefs and the Phrygian material from Gordion. It reframes every ruin you will see elsewhere in Turkey.
Tip Go on your way into the country rather than out of it. The order matters.
Turkish school groups, families and army veterans come here in large numbers, and the atmosphere is part of the point. The scale, the ceremony and the museum beneath explain the republic better than any book.
Tip Weekday mornings are calmer; public holidays are extraordinary but extremely busy.
Up through Ulus to the castle walls, round the ramparts for the view, then down through the lanes of Hisar past restored houses, spice shops and the copper bazaar on Çıkrıkçılar Yokuşu.
Tip Late afternoon. The light is better and the walls are less exposed than at midday in summer.
Stand in front of a temple wall on which Augustus listed what he had built, conquered and paid for. It is the fullest surviving copy in the world, and it costs nothing to see.
Tip Combine it with the Hacı Bayram mosque next door and lunch in the square between them.
Ankara is the centre of the high-speed network. Konya — whirling dervishes and the Mevlâna museum — is under two hours each way, which makes a genuine day trip from the capital.
Tip Book YHT tickets online in advance; popular departures sell out, especially on Friday and Sunday.
The modern city south of Ulus is where Ankara actually lives — student bars around Kızılay, restaurants along Tunalı Hilmi, and the meyhane streets of Sakarya Caddesi with fish and rakı.
Tip Sakarya Caddesi from about 20:00. It is loud, cheap and entirely local.
Local food
Central Anatolian cooking is meat, grain and pulses rather than olive oil and fish — plainer than the coast, and built for a cold plateau winter.
Rice baked with lamb and a little tomato and fat in a shallow pan until the grains take on the meat, then turned out and served in wedges. The city's own dish and increasingly hard to find well made.
Where to try it Older restaurants in Ulus and around Kızılay that advertise it by name.
A sour soup of tiny dried okra pods threaded on strings and stored through the winter, cooked with lamb and lemon. An Ankara speciality that tastes nothing like okra elsewhere.
Where to try it Traditional lokantas. The dried okra strings are sold in the Ulus market if you want to see them first.
White beans in tomato sauce over rice, with pickles on the side — the standard civil-servant lunch, eaten standing up all over the government districts and much better than it sounds.
Where to try it Canteen-style lokantas around Kızılay and Bakanlıklar at noon on a weekday.
From the Ottoman town 100 km north-west: a dry, crisp ring biscuit eaten with tea, and a lamb-and-vegetable casserole baked in an earthenware pot. Beypazarı also turns its carrots into everything from juice to Turkish delight.
Where to try it Beypazarı itself on a day trip, or shops in Ankara selling the biscuits by the bag.
The district north of the city is known across Turkey for its pickles and vinegar — cucumbers, peppers, cabbage, green almonds — sold from barrels and drunk as brine as much as eaten.
Where to try it Turşucu shops throughout the city. Ask for a glass of the brine with your kuru fasulye.
The local version of the sesame ring is smaller, thinner and much crisper than Istanbul's chewy one, sold from carts and bakeries and eaten with tea rather than as street food on the move.
Where to try it Any street cart in the morning. The difference from the Istanbul version is immediately obvious.
Accommodation
Ankara is a business and government city, which means good mid-range hotels, weekend discounts and very little in the way of boutique charm.
Transport
As the capital, Ankara is the best-connected inland city in the country by both rail and road.
The metro handles the north-south axis; the historic sights are a walkable cluster once you are in Ulus.
When to go
Ankara sits at 900 metres on the Anatolian plateau, which makes for a continental climate: cold, snowy winters and hot dry summers, with two very pleasant shoulder seasons.
The plateau greens up, temperatures sit between 15 and 25°C and the outdoor sites — Gordion, Hattusa, the castle walls — are at their best. Rain is possible into May.
Hot at 30–33°C but very dry, and considerably more bearable than the humid coast. Evenings cool down noticeably. Hattusa and Gordion have little shade.
Clear, dry and warm through September, cooling steadily in October. The most reliable weather of the year and the best time for the day trips out of the city.
Cold, often below freezing, with snow lying for weeks. The museums are unaffected and hotel rates fall, but Hattusa and Gordion become bleak and can be inaccessible.
Worth planning around: Hattusa in deep winter — the site is exposed high ground, the walking is substantial, and snow closes the approach roads. Gordion is less affected but no more pleasant.
Itinerary
The citadel hill and its museums on the first day, the republic on the second — with a third day available for Gordion or Hattusa.
Ten thousand years of Anatolia, then the Romans.
Anıtkabir, and the modern city that grew up around it.
Optional, and much better after the museum.
Travel tips
Ankara is easy to do badly by treating it as a stopover. A little sequencing makes it one of the most useful stops in the country.
FAQ
For one or two days, yes — chiefly for the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, which is the best place anywhere to understand Çatalhöyük, the Hittites and the Phrygians, and for Anıtkabir, which explains the modern republic. Add a Byzantine citadel and the fullest surviving copy of Augustus's Res Gestae and it is a substantial stop. It is not a beautiful city and nobody comes here for atmosphere.
Two is right: one for the citadel hill and its museums, one for Anıtkabir and the modern city. A third day lets you reach Gordion, 90 km west, or Hattusa, 200 km east — both Bronze Age capitals, and both far more rewarding after you have seen their finds in the Ankara museum.
Turkey's finest archaeological collection outside Istanbul, housed in a restored fifteenth-century covered bazaar below the castle and named European Museum of the Year in 1997. It runs chronologically from the Palaeolithic through Neolithic Çatalhöyük — the seated goddess figurine, reconstructed wall paintings — to Hattian gold, Assyrian trade tablets, Hittite reliefs and Phrygian bronzes from Gordion.
Yes, and it is free. Atatürk's mausoleum was completed in 1953 on its own hill, approached along a ceremonial road lined with twenty-four Hittite-style lions. The scale and the ceremony are the point, as are the Turkish families and school groups who come in very large numbers. Do not skip the War of Independence museum beneath the plaza.
By bus, which takes about four and a half hours from the AŞTİ terminal to Göreme or Nevşehir and runs frequently through the day. There is no direct high-speed rail. Many travellers do Istanbul to Ankara by train in four and a half hours, spend a night, and continue by bus — which turns an awkward transfer into a worthwhile stop.
Yes, but treat it as a full day. It is around 200 km east near Boğazkale, roughly three hours each way, and the Hittite capital is spread over several kilometres of hillside with the Lion Gate, the tunnel through the ramparts and the Yazılıkaya rock sanctuary two kilometres beyond. You need a hire car or an organised tour; public transport is impractical.
April to June and September to October. The city sits at 900 metres on the Anatolian plateau, so winters are cold with snow lying for weeks, and summers are hot at 30–33°C though very dry. The shoulder seasons are mild and clear, and they are also when the outdoor sites at Gordion and Hattusa are at their best.
Keep exploring
Places that pair well with Ankara, whether you have a few spare days or are building a longer route.
Nevşehir, Central Anatolia, Turkey
A landscape with no real parallel: soft volcanic rock carved by wind and water into towers and cones, then carved again by Byzantine Christians into painted churches and underground refuges.
Don't miss A hundred hot-air balloons rising out of the valleys at dawn — and being in one of them.
Explore Destination — CappadociaMarmara, Turkey
The only city on two continents, holding the buildings of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman empires, a covered bazaar of 4,000 shops, and a waterway running through the middle of it.
Don't miss Hagia Sophia — a cathedral for 916 years, a mosque for 481, a museum for 86, and a mosque again since 2020.
Explore Destination — IstanbulSoutheastern Anatolia, Turkey
A pilgrimage city of sacred carp pools and covered bazaars, twenty minutes from the site that pushed the start of monumental building back by six thousand years.
Don't miss Göbekli Tepe — carved stone enclosures raised around 9500 BC, before farming, pottery, metal or writing.
Explore Destination — Şanlıurfa & Göbekli Tepeİzmir, Aegean, Turkey
The best-preserved classical city in the Mediterranean, where you walk the actual paved streets past a 24,000-seat theatre, public latrines and a library, with a small Turkish town alongside it.
Don't miss The Terrace Houses — six Roman apartments with mosaic floors, painted walls and plumbing, under a modern roof.
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