Hattusa

Hattusa was the capital of the Hittites in the second millennium BC, and it is enormous - a walled city climbing a hillside, with a road loop of several kilometres linking the parts. You drive between the Great Temple in the lower town, the Lion Gate with its two weathered beasts, the King's Gate and the Sphinx Gate on the Yerkapi rampart, where a stone-paved tunnel runs right through the embankment and comes out on the slope below. Clay tablet archives found here recovered the Hittite language, the earliest Indo-European tongue we can read. Two kilometres away at Yazilikaya, a natural cleft in the rock is lined with reliefs of gods walking in procession. The city was abandoned around 1200 BC.

What you actually see

• The Lion Gate - two worn stone lions flanking the western entrance.
• The Yerkapi tunnel - a stone-corbelled passage through the earth rampart.
• The Great Temple - foundations and storerooms of the lower town complex.
• Yazilikaya - rows of gods carved into the walls of a rock cleft.

When to go

Late spring and early autumn are best; the plateau is over a thousand metres up, so summer is hot and dry while winter brings snow and closures. Wind is constant even on warm days. Start early, because the loop plus Yazilikaya takes four to five hours if you get out and walk at each stop.

Honest expectations

Without a car you are stuck, and taxis from Bogazkale add up. Much of the city is foundations in grass and takes imagination. The carvings on the gates are casts, with the originals in the Ankara and Istanbul museums. There is almost no shade, few facilities, and the reliefs at Yazilikaya are badly weathered.

Nearby

Alacahoyuk, another Hittite site to the north, and the town of Corum.