Tokat City and Castle

Tokat is a historic central Anatolian city about 115 km southeast of Amasya in Tokat Province, reached in roughly 1.5 to 2 hours by intercity bus or car along the valley highway through Turhal. The day trip works well as a half-day or full-day excursion, leaving Amasya in the morning and returning in the late afternoon. The city occupies a narrow valley beneath a dramatic rocky ridge topped by a medieval castle with 28 towers, dating from Roman and Byzantine foundations and expanded under the Seljuks and Ottomans. While the interior of the fortress is closed to the public, the cliff approach road gives excellent views over the old town and surrounding hills. Below the castle, the central attraction is the Gök Medrese, a late-13th-century Seljuk theological college built around 1277 with a deeply carved stone portal, now serving as the Tokat Museum. The museum's collection spans finds from the Bronze Age through to the Ottoman period and can be covered in one to two hours. The old bazaar stretching south of the museum is the right place to find Tokat yazma textiles — cotton cloths hand-printed using carved wooden blocks — which are the city's most distinctive craft product and can be bought directly from workshop studios. Ottoman-era wooden houses survive in the residential alleys near the market. Lunch is best taken at one of the lokanta restaurants on Gaziosmanpaşa Bulvarı, where Tokat kebabı — slow-roasted lamb cooked upright on a long skewer — is the local speciality. The Ballıca Cave, one of Turkey's more impressive stalactite cave systems, lies about 20 km north of Tokat and can be added for visitors with their own vehicle, extending the visit into a full-day trip.