Boğazköy-Hattusha Archaeological Site

Hattusha, today known by the name of the nearby village of Boğazköy, was the capital of the Hittite Empire. It sits on steep, rocky slopes above the Budaközü valley, roughly 80 km south-west of Çorum, in what was the heartland of the Hittite state. Everything here is built on a grand scale: a circuit of defensive walls climbs and drops over the hillsides, and the city opens only to the north.

The site was first described for the outside world by the traveller Charles Texier in 1834. For decades people did not realise whose city it was, until scholars linked the ruins to the Hittites, who had been thought to be centred in Syria. German archaeologists began systematic digs in the 1930s and the work continues today. The story on the ground stretches from a small early settlement and an Assyrian trading quarter to the Hittite capital of the 17th century BC onward, its collapse around 1190 BC, and later Phrygian occupation.

Plan a slow visit. The gates, temples, palace terraces and the rock sanctuary nearby make the site large enough for several hours of walking, and the open landscape gives a sense of how imposing the capital must have been.