Diyarbakır Walls and Hevsel Gardens

Diyarbakır's walls are among the longest continuous circuits of ancient fortification anywhere - close to six kilometres round the old city, built and rebuilt from the Roman period onward in the local black basalt, with four main gates, dozens of towers and long stretches standing to full height. The stone carries centuries of inscriptions and reliefs, including Seljuk and Artuqid work with lions, eagles and Kufic bands on the Ulu Beden and Yedi Kardeş towers. Below the eastern wall the ground drops to the Tigris, and the strip between them is the Hevsel Gardens: several hundred hectares of market gardens and orchards, watered from the river and cultivated continuously for thousands of years, supplying the city's vegetables and holding a substantial bird population on the migration route. UNESCO inscribed the walls and the gardens together in 2015, precisely because the two have functioned as a single system - fortress above, food supply below - for so long.

The main sights

• The basalt circuit - six kilometres of black city wall.
• The carved towers - Artuqid reliefs and inscriptions.
• The Hevsel Gardens - the cultivated strip down to the Tigris.
• The river below - the Tigris and the old ten-arch bridge.

When to go

April to May and October to November - Diyarbakır summers are extremely hot, regularly above forty degrees, and the walls have no shade at all.

Things to know

Wall walkways are unfenced in places with real drops and uneven footing. Heat in summer is dangerous rather than merely uncomfortable. The gardens are working farmland, not a park.

Nearby

The Ulu Cami and the old city's stone courtyards are inside the walls; Mardin is about ninety minutes south.