Hattuşa

Wind rakes across the Anatolian plateau and funnels through the Lion Gate, its carved guardians still baring their teeth after thirty-three centuries. Foundations of temples, grain stores and palace corridors sprawl along a treeless ridgeline where the sky feels close enough to press against. This was the capital of an empire that rivalled Egypt, and most travellers have never heard of it.

Hattuşa is the UNESCO-listed capital of the Hittite Empire, which ruled much of Anatolia and northern Mesopotamia from roughly 1600 to 1178 BCE. The site at Boğazkale in Çorum province spreads across kilometres of open ground, taking in the Great Temple, the Lion and Sphinx Gates, and the Yerkapı tunnel, a 70-metre stone-lined passage beneath the ramparts. Excavations since 1906 have recovered thousands of cuneiform tablets, among them the Treaty of Kadesh with Ramesses II, the earliest surviving international peace treaty. Two kilometres away, the rock sanctuary of Yazılıkaya carries more than 90 Hittite gods in carved procession, and unlike the coastal ruins, the scale and silence here belong almost entirely to you.