7 Best Sights in Cappadocia and Central Turkey, Turkey

Atatürk's picture is on every single piece of Turkish currency, his visage hangs in just about every office and official building in the country, and his principles and ideas are the foundations of modern Turkish political thought. So his vast mausoleum, perched on a hilltop overlooking the capital city he built, is on a scale suitable to his stature in Turkey. A marble promenade flanked with Hittite-style lions leads to the imposing mausoleum, where a huge sarcophagus lies beyond a colonnade with inscriptions from his speeches and below a ceiling of brilliant gold mosaics. An adjoining museum contains personal belongings from the revered man's life, including his clothes, automobiles, and personal library. The corridors underneath the tomb house an in-depth exhibit on the 1919–22 War of Independence. To reach the mausoleum, you can take the metro to Tandoğan and walk up the long road that ascends from the main entrance at the northern end of the grounds. A quicker way is to take a taxi to the alternate entrance on Akdeniz Caddesi, on the southeast side.

When the Sufi mystic and philosopher-poet Mevlâna Celaleddin Rumi died in 1273, he was buried in Konya beside his father, and a great shrine was erected above them. Today, the museum is one of the most visited sites in Turkey, attracting more than 2 million people a year. The interior resembles that of a mosque, with its intricately painted domes, ornate chandeliers, and Islamic inscriptions on the walls. The main hall contains many dervish tombs, all of them with carved stone turbans wrapped in cloth atop the sarcophagi. The place is usually filled with Muslim pilgrims standing with their palms outward in prayer. Next to the mausoleum is a courtyard with a large şadırvan, or ablutions fountain, around which are rooms that formerly served as dervish cells. These have been turned into a museum, with each room illustrating a different aspect of life in the dervish brotherhood. A separate structure, the matbah, or kitchen, shows mannequins of dervishes engaged in the preparation and serving of food—activities that took on an almost ritual significance in the dervish hierarchy.

Ankara's main historic sites are clustered around its ancient citadel (known as the Hisar or Kale in Turkish), high on a hill overlooking the city. Though the citadel's precise origins are not known, the inner and outer walls standing today are thought to have been built between the 7th and 9th century, during the Byzantine period. Although the modern city has grown up around the citadel, the area inside the walls has retained an almost villagelike atmosphere, an entire neighborhood with winding, cobblestoned streets and old houses built with timber and plaster. The municipality has recently cleaned up the entrance area, but some parts of the neighborhood inside the citadel remain fairly rundown. The easiest place to enter the citadel is from Parmak Kapısı (Finger Gate), also known as Saat Kapısı (Clock Gate), across from the Divan Çukurhan. Head toward the center, where you'll see the restored Şark Kulesi (Eastern Tower). Climb the stone steps to the tower's upper ramparts for excellent city panoramas.

The pleasant, well-tended Gençlik Parkı ("Youth Park"), though not large enough to make you forget you're in the middle of the city, is a nice place for a stroll. Plantings are manicured, and a small, man-made lake is surrounded by a partly trellised, partly tree-lined walkway. Ankara's main tourist information office is also in the park.

These galleries, in an ornate marble building next door to the Ethnography Museum, display a vast number of works by late Ottoman and modern Turkish artists. With a few exceptions, most of the latter haven't earned international recognition, yet this collection provides an interesting glimpse into the way Turkey's artists have been influenced by Western trends over the last century and a half. Schools of art such as Impressionism and Abstract Expressionism are represented among the portraits, landscape paintings, sculptures, and other works on display.

Excavations of this 4th-century Roman town have been going on for about a decade. So far, the well-preserved remains of a Roman bathhouse and a meeting hall with an extensive mosaic floor have been uncovered, as has as a Byzantine church that was later built on top of the mosaics. A roof protects part of the site. There are catwalks and some limited explanatory panels for visitors.

One of Turkey’s most important bird sanctuaries, Sultan Sazlığı is a national park and Ramsar-protected wetland that’s a 32-km (20-mile) drive from the turnoff for the Soğanlı Valleys. A total of 301 species have been observed here, including flamingos, spoonbills, buzzards, gray herons, lapwings, and great white egrets. There’s no admission fee for the park, but first-timers are encouraged to hire a field guide to take them out by boat, jeep, or foot (depending on the water level in the marshes). Spring is the best time to visit—though, thanks to good rains in the last couple of years, birds can be seen year-round. Contact the guides who run Sultan Pansiyon in Ovaçiftlik village in advance to make arrangements.