Three Thousand Years of Amasra: A Brief History of a Town

Most people who see Amasra for the first time ask the same question: “How can such a small town have such a large castle?”

The answer is simple: this castle was not built for the town. The town grew up around the castle.

The First Traces from the Sesamos Period

In the ninth century BC, Phoenicians settled on the peninsula that is today Kaleiçi and named it Sesamos. Three sides of the peninsula were surrounded by sea, connected to the mainland by a single narrow isthmus — a point easy to defend, with a harbour offering safe anchorage.

The Romans saw these qualities and made the city an important base. Pliny described Sesamos as “the most beautiful city on the Paphlagonian coast.”

The Traces of the Genoese

In the Middle Ages the name of Amasra changed: it became Amastris during the Byzantine period, and acquired its present-day similarity in sound when the Genoese arrived.

The greater part of the fortification walls in Kaleiçi, the towers on either side of the harbour and the arch bridge separating the Large Harbour from the small harbour — all are Genoese work of the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries.

The Ottomans and After

In 1460, Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror took Amasra. The strategic importance of the city gradually diminished; trade routes changed. The town shrank, but preserved the stone fabric within its walls.

This shrinkage is also the source of what makes Amasra so captivating today: nothing was added on top of five hundred years. The interior of the walls remained an Ottoman neighbourhood.

Today

Amasra is a town that people come to and never quite leave behind. Half of those who come in summer depart saying “we’ll be back.” Most of them really do return.

We have been here since 2001. We are certain you will come back too.