Mardin
Protected Historic Urban Site On The UNESCO Tentative List; A Terraced Limestone City Above The Mesopotamian Plain With A Living Syriac Christian Community · Mardin, Mardin
Mardin is built in terraces down a limestone ridge, so that every house looks over the roofs of the one below it and out across the Mesopotamian plain towards Syria, forty kilometres away and visible on a clear day. The stone is the colour of honey and takes carving well, which the city's masons have been exploiting for a thousand years on doorways, window surrounds and the facades of its medreses. It is one of the few places in Turkiye where Syriac Orthodox Christianity is still a living community rather than a ruin - Aramaic is spoken in the villages, and Deyrulzafaran monastery five kilometres out was a patriarchal seat for six hundred years. The old city is a single stepped street with covered alleys running off and under it, and the sensible way to see it is to walk down through it in the late afternoon and let the plain do the rest. Summer afternoons here pass forty degrees and the city sleeps through them.
Eski Mardin, Artuklu, Mardin, Mardin, Mardin, Turkiye
An inhabited city, open at all hours. The medreses, the museum and the monasteries keep daytime hours; Deyrulzafaran monastery admits visitors between services and closes for them. The bazaar runs through the day and winds down early. Summer afternoons are extremely hot and the old city goes quiet until evening.