Walls of Diyarbakır

The old city of Diyarbakır, in south-eastern Turkey, stands on a basalt plateau above the Tigris and is enclosed by walls of black volcanic stone. The walls run for nearly six kilometres around the old town, with dozens of towers and four main gates. UNESCO inscribed the Diyarbakır Fortress and the Hevsel Gardens, the green belt of fields and orchards between the walls and the river, in 2015.

A city has stood here since antiquity, and the walls in their present line are generally traced to the Roman period, in the fourth century, when the city, then called Amida, was a frontier stronghold facing the Sasanian empire. They were besieged and taken more than once, notably by the Sasanian king Shapur II in 359. They were rebuilt and extended by later rulers, Byzantine, Arab, Marwanid Kurdish, Artuqid Turkish and Ottoman, and many of the towers carry their inscriptions.

The walls are best seen from the south, where they stand above the Hevsel Gardens and the river, and from the Ulu Beden and Evli Beden towers, decorated with Artuqid reliefs of eagles, lions and inscriptions. Within, the old city is a dense web of courtyard houses and mosques, churches and caravanserais, built of the same dark basalt, which gives Diyarbakır its distinctive sombre colour.