Things to Do in Corum and Hattusa: The Hittite Capital

--- title: "Çorum and Hattusa travel guide: the capital of a bronze age superpower" description: "An honest guide to Çorum and Hattusa, Turkey: how to actually see the 5 km Hittite capital and UNESCO site, Yazılıkaya, Alacahöyük, Şapinuva, the Çorum museum, İskilip and Osmancık, when to go, what to eat, and whether you need a guide." city: "Çorum" lang: "en" ---

Çorum: a province nobody plans for, holding the capital of an empire

Almost nobody writes Çorum on a Turkey itinerary. For most people the name attaches to one thing, roasted chickpeas, and stops there. Yet inside this province, in the small district of Boğazkale, sits the capital of a state that in the second millennium BC negotiated with Egypt as an equal power. Hattusa. This is where the Hittite empire was run from, and it is on the UNESCO World Heritage list.

One document explains why it matters. Among the cuneiform tablets excavated here was the text of the Treaty of Kadesh, the earliest known peace treaty. A copy of it hangs at the United Nations today. The first written act of international diplomacy came out of the ground on a hillside in Çorum. Walking up that hillside knowing this, and walking up it not knowing, are two completely different days.

Who is this for? People with a genuine interest in archaeology. People who read about a place before they go. People who would rather be alone at a site than queuing at one. Who is it not for? Anyone whose travel runs on photographs and expects a view to be handed to them. What waits here is not standing marble. It is stone foundations.

And this is exactly where the trip goes wrong for most visitors. They arrive at Hattusa expecting Ephesus: a street to walk down, facades still upright, everything within one compact circuit. What they find is a hillside roughly 5 km around, uneven, windy and without shade, where most of what survives above ground is at foundation level. Forty minutes later they say there is nothing here and get back in the car. The problem is not the site. The problem is that nobody told them what they were looking at. This guide exists to fix that.

Quick answer

Çorum is an archaeology trip that punishes the unprepared visitor and rewards the prepared one more than almost anywhere else in Turkey.

• Order matters: museum first, ruins second. Do it the other way round and the day collapses.
• Hattusa is not a single walking loop. The circuit is roughly 5 km, hilly and exposed. Most visitors drive between the gates.
• A car is effectively required. Getting between Boğazkale, Alacahöyük and Şapinuva by public transport is not realistic.
• Go in spring or autumn. The plateau is cold and exposed in winter, hot and shadeless in summer.

1. Çorum Müzesi

The right place to start this trip is not Hattusa. It is here, the archaeology museum in Çorum city, where the Hittite material found across the province is gathered in one room and explained. There is an 80 km drive ahead of you to Boğazkale, and doing that drive without stopping here first throws away half the trip.

The reason is simple. What you see above ground at Hattusa is foundation walls, door sills and storage pits. Nobody fills that in for you at the site. You have to arrive already carrying the picture in your head. Once you have seen the tablets, the vessels, the seals and the small deity figures in this building, an empty rectangle at the site stops being an empty rectangle. You can guess what stood inside it.

The collection is not only Hittite. This region was continuously inhabited from the Chalcolithic through to Ottoman times and the display follows that. Give it two hours, not a whole morning. Opening days and entry conditions change, so verify officially before you go.

2. Çorum Saat Kulesi

A nineteenth-century clock tower on Gazi Caddesi in the city centre. Let us be straight about it: the tower is not a reason to come to Çorum, and any guide implying otherwise is padding. There are dozens like it across Anatolia.

It earns its place here for a different reason. If you are going to stop anywhere in central Çorum and look around, this is where you stop. The market around the tower is where the province's daily life happens: the leblebi shops, the rows selling copper and hardware, the workers' canteens. Spending an hour walking here on the evening before Hattusa, or on the way back out, gives the province a face instead of leaving it an abstraction between two archaeological sites.

The old mosque and the older market fabric are nearby and fall inside the same walk. Set expectations properly: this is a break, not a destination. You do not climb the tower, you look at it. Twenty minutes to an hour is enough.

3. Boğazkale Müzesi

The site museum, in the village of Boğazkale itself. If you missed the museum in Çorum city, this stop is not optional. If you did not miss it, go in anyway. This collection holds material taken directly out of the Hattusa excavations, and the connection to the ground outside is immediate.

One thing needs clearing up here, because most visitors get it wrong. The lions on the gate and the god carved into the King's Gate are not the originals standing where they were made. The originals were taken into protection to stop them weathering away, and casts were installed in their place. So if you want to see the real surface of the stone, the tool marks, the decisions a carver made three thousand years ago, you have to come inside. Outside you see the shape. Inside you see the sculpture.

The museum is small and takes under an hour. But that hour sets the quality of the three that follow it. Verify hours and entry conditions officially.

4. Hattusa

The capital of the Hittite empire and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The first thing to understand is the scale. The walled city traces a circuit of roughly 5 km, spread across a hillside, with a serious change in elevation between the lower city and the upper city. This is not a ruin. It is the ground plan of a capital.

The first structure you meet past the entrance is the Great Temple, the complex in the lower city dedicated to the Storm God and the Sun Goddess of Arinna. The hundreds of rooms around it were storage and archive space. Part of the cuneiform tablet archive came out of this area. What stands today is foundation walls and some enormous stone basins, but the plan is legible: a temple, wrapped in a bureaucracy.

Climb and you reach Büyükkale, the rock outcrop the royal citadel sat on. This was the seat of government, and the main body of the archive was found here. The text of the Treaty of Kadesh came out of this archive.

For the main pin we use the site coordinate that official sources give for the city. The entrance itself is on the Boğazkale side to the north, there is a single signed way in, and you cannot miss it.

5. Aslanlı Kapı

The south-western gate in the walls, and the image most people carry in their heads when they hear Hattusa. Two lions facing outward, a passage between them. There is an idea repeated throughout Hittite gate design: a gate is not an opening, it is a threshold that has to be guarded. The lions are not decoration. They are on duty.

Say it again, because people are confused on the spot: these lions are casts. The originals are in protection. That is not a shortcoming, it is correct conservation practice, but if you arrive without knowing it you spend a minute wondering why they look so new.

Look at the reconstructed section of wall beside the gate. Years ago a stretch of the fortification was rebuilt here using mudbrick and period technique. That fragment is doing something useful for the whole site: it shows you the height you are supposed to be imagining. Every foundation line you see elsewhere once rose to about that. This may be the single most helpful stop for understanding the place.

6. Yerkapı

The highest point of the site and the most impressive piece of engineering on it. The southern wall runs along an artificial earth rampart here, and underneath the rampart a stone tunnel roughly 70 metres long passes through to the other side. You can walk into it and come out the far end.

What the tunnel was for is argued over. One reading is a secret link to the outside during a siege. Another is a ceremonial approach. What is not in doubt is the construction: not an arch, but a triangular section made of stones leaning against each other from both sides. They solved this problem long before the arch became common.

Walk up onto the rampart. This is the one place you see the whole plan of Hattusa in a single view, and measuring the distance down to the lower city with your eyes is when the size of the place finally registers. Warning: the wind here is hard and there is no shade at all. A hat and a windproof layer earn their weight in summer and winter both.

7. Kral Kapısı

The south-eastern gate. The name misleads. The relief inside the gate is not a king, it is an armed god: helmet, axe, sword, striding in profile. Early investigators took him for a ruler and the name stuck.

The figure is among the best Hittite relief carving there is and repays close looking: the musculature, the working of the belt, the fall of the garment. Once more, what stands here is a cast. The original is in the Museum of Anatolian Civilisations in Ankara.

The position of the gate tells you how Hattusa thought about defence. The gates are not cut where the wall is easiest to reach. They are cut where the ground is steepest. An attacker coming for this gate has to climb, in the open, underneath the wall, the entire way. You only see this by standing at the gate and looking down the slope.

You come down from Yerkapı to the King's Gate on the site road. The distance is walkable but most visitors drive it. If your time is short, Aslanlı Kapı, Yerkapı and Kral Kapısı are the spine of Hattusa.

8. Yazılıkaya

The open-air rock sanctuary just outside the city, with the Hittite gods carved into the natural rock faces of two chambers. This is where you see, in place and original, the Hittite art that Hattusa itself will not show you. It may be the highest-return hour of the whole trip.

There are two chambers. Chamber A carries more than sixty divine figures worked in relief along facing walls, arranged as two processions: male gods on the west wall, goddesses on the east, meeting in the centre where the Storm God faces the Sun Goddess. Most figures have their names written beside them in Luwian hieroglyphs. So this is a work of art and also an inventory: the official register of the Hittite pantheon.

Chamber B is smaller and stranger. Winged, lion-headed creatures hold the entrance. Inside, King Tudhaliya IV appears embraced by the protective god Sharruma. There are also twelve underworld gods and a deity worked into the form of a sword.

The light changes the visit. The reliefs read far better in the raking light of early morning or late afternoon. Midday sun flattens them.

9. Alacahöyük

About 25 km north of Boğazkale, in the district of Alaca. Coming here after Hattusa works well, because Alacahöyük is small and legible: you cover it in an hour and you can follow the plan with your eyes instead of your imagination.

It is famous for the Sphinx Gate. Two sphinxes facing outward, and around them a run of carved orthostats: offering scenes, a bull, musicians, acrobats. If the gates of Hattusa are projecting power, the reliefs here are narrating a ceremony.

The bigger story is not on the surface. The bronze standards from the royal tombs beneath this mound, those stag and bull figures you have seen on museum posters and tourism material across Turkey, came out of here, and they belong to the Early Bronze Age, before the Hittites. Which means that when the Hittites arrived, this mound was already a thousand years old. The originals are in Ankara. Here you get replicas and a site museum.

The sphinxes are casts too. Get used to it.

10. Eskiyapar Höyüğü

A mound beside the road between Alaca and Çorum. Honesty first: this is not a presented site. Do not expect signage, a marked path or an interpretation board. What you see is a hill and the traces of excavation.

So why include it? Because this trip has a theme running under it, and the theme is the mound. In Anatolia, when a settlement is destroyed, the next one is built on top of it, and over millennia the hill grows. At Eskiyapar, layers of occupation from the Chalcolithic through to the Phrygian period have been identified, and precious metal objects of the Hittite period were recovered here.

If you have been to Alacahöyük or Hattusa and started wondering how the mound logic actually works, this is that logic with the presentation stripped off: just soil and just time. It is a ten-minute stop and it is on your route. If mound archaeology does not interest you, skip it with a clear conscience. Nobody will mind.

11. Şapinuva

In the Ortaköy district, about 55 km from Çorum city. This was the second great centre of the Hittite world after Hattusa, and the fact that almost nobody has heard of it makes it more interesting rather than less.

Excavations produced close to four thousand cuneiform tablets and fragments, written in Hittite, Hattian, Hurrian and Akkadian: religious ritual, military correspondence, records of divination. A bronze warrior's helmet, three thousand three hundred years old, was recovered here. The correspondence indicates that for a period the royal family sat here directly, which makes this not a provincial town but a second seat of government.

Set your expectations. Şapinuva is a working excavation, not a presented site for visitors. What is visible on the surface is even less than at Hattusa: foundations, excavation sections, protective covers. The reason to come is not the view, it is the context. If you left Hattusa wondering how the Hittite state actually functioned, this is the second piece of the answer. If you did not, skip it. Verify visiting conditions officially before setting out.

12. İncesu Kanyonu

Right next to Şapinuva, south of Ortaköy. This is arguably the only stop that lets the trip breathe, because a Çorum itinerary is otherwise built almost entirely out of stone and soil.

An old caravanserai and rock-cut structures are known to sit inside the canyon, which makes sense given that a historic route ran through here. For walking and scenery it is worth the detour, particularly in spring when there is water.

Here is where we have to be honest with you: our coordinate for this one is approximate. We could not pin the canyon to a single verified point in an independent mapping source, so the marker shows you the area rather than a confirmed entrance. Before you drive out, check the route from the Ortaköy side and confirm the area is open. Canyon walks change with the season and the water level.

Combine it with Şapinuva on the same day. The two sit beside each other. Do not give it a day of its own.

13. İskilip Kalesi

About 55 km north-west of Çorum city. This stop is not part of the Hittite route at all, it is a different thing entirely, and it is the right answer if you want to add a third day.

In the middle of the town of İskilip a single mass of rock rises, and the castle sits on top of it. Rock-cut tombs dated to the Roman period are carved into the face and are plainly visible from below. The town has grown onto the skirt of the rock, in narrow lanes and courtyard houses.

The reason to go up is not the castle. It is looking down. From above, the fabric of İskilip reads in one glance: roofs, courtyards, minarets, mountains behind. There are not many town silhouettes left this intact in Turkey.

The climb is steep and the footing is uneven, a real effort for anyone who does not walk regularly. Ask locally about the road and current access. Give old İskilip below half an hour too. It is worth as much as the castle.

14. Kapılıkaya Kaya Mezarı

In the Laçin district, between Çorum and Osmancık. A monumental tomb cut into a rock face looking over the valley. Who it was made for is not known with certainty. It is dated to the Hellenistic or Roman period and carries a Greek inscription above the entrance.

What makes it interesting is the position and the idea. An architectural facade has been carved into the living rock: column, pediment, doorway. A building is being imitated, except there is no building. There is only the face of the rock. From a distance it looks like a temple door sunk into the mountain.

For expectations: getting here is a bit of work. You leave the main road, signage is weak, the last part is on foot, and the tomb sits high. You can get close, but there is a climb. If you are alone and the weather has turned, do not push it.

Who is it for? People already heading towards Osmancık who do not mind leaving the road. Driving out from Çorum purely for this means a two-hour round trip.

15. Koyunbaba Köprüsü

In Osmancık, over the Kızılırmak. A stone bridge dated to the fifteenth century and the reign of Bayezid II, one of the longest historic Ottoman bridges in Turkey, and still standing. You walk across it.

It runs to hundreds of metres with a long series of arches. The Kızılırmak is wide here, and the bridge was built to answer that width. Seen from the bank, the rhythm of the arches against the colour of the river makes a good picture, especially in late afternoon light.

This is a break, not a destination. If you are passing through Osmancık, or heading on towards Samsun or Kastamonu, it deserves twenty minutes. Leave the car, walk it end to end, then look at it from the side. That is enough.

Osmancık castle sits above the town and can be added to the same stop. But the bridge on its own does something for the trip: it pulls Çorum out of being purely Hittite and gives the province depth in time. The same river, two different states, three thousand years apart.

How to see Hattusa properly

Start with scale. The walled circuit is roughly 5 km and it is not flat, it is a hillside. Between the lower city and Yerkapı there is a real climb. Walking the whole thing is physically possible, but it will take three or four hours and your legs. Most visitors use the one-way vehicle road inside the site: you start at the entrance, work round the gates in order, and come back down. If you do not have a car, plan for this in advance and do not assume there is a shuttle waiting.

Now the actual issue: knowing what you are looking at. Very little at Hattusa is standing. What you get is foundation walls, door sills, temple plans, storage pits. There are exceptions that survive properly: the masses of the Lion Gate and the King's Gate, the Yerkapı tunnel and rampart, and the reconstructed mudbrick stretch of wall. For everything else you are working with your head, not your eyes. This is why the museum comes first and the site second. This is why one hour of reading about the Hittites before you set off multiplies the day by about three. That is not a slogan, it is just how the site operates.

Which brings up the guide question. Guiding can be arranged on the Boğazkale side, and a good guide makes a bigger difference here than at almost any other site in Turkey, because without narration the ground really is silent. The alternative is your own preparation: study the site plan beforehand, find a book or a good audio commentary. Do one or the other. Doing neither is the recipe for that forty-minute disappointment.

Physical conditions. The site is open and windswept with essentially no shade. You are at plateau altitude, which lies to you: it feels cool while the sun burns. Hat, water, windproof layer, proper shoes. The ground is stony and sloped, so nothing lighter than trainers.

Timing. Half a day minimum for Hattusa, an hour for Yazılıkaya, an hour for the Boğazkale museum. That is a full day on the Boğazkale side. You can compress Alacahöyük into the same day, but it will feel compressed. The comfortable version: one day for Boğazkale, the next for Alacahöyük and Şapinuva. Verify entry conditions, hours and the current status of driving inside the site officially.

Getting there

Two bases, and they serve different purposes.

Çorum city. More places to stay and eat, the museum is here, and the northern stops (İskilip, Laçin, Osmancık) are reached from here. The drawback is distance: Çorum to Boğazkale is about 80 km on mountain road. So your Hattusa day opens with an hour of driving and closes with another one.

Boğazkale itself. A small settlement right at the foot of the site. Staying here means you are inside the ruins early, spend the heat of the day in the museum, and walk up to Yazılıkaya in afternoon light. If you intend to take Hattusa seriously, this is the efficient answer. Accommodation is limited, so look ahead in season.

A car is effectively required, and there is no point softening that. Bus links from Çorum to Boğazkale are limited through the day and timed around local need, not around your itinerary. The site interior is driven anyway. Getting between Alacahöyük, Şapinuva, İskilip and Osmancık on public transport is not technically impossible but it will consume your days. Without a car, a tour out of Ankara or Çorum is the only realistic alternative.

Coming from further afield: Çorum is roughly 240 km from Ankara and roughly 220 km from Samsun. The nearest airports are on the Merzifon and Samsun side, and Ankara Esenboğa also works. Note one thing if you are approaching from Yozgat: Boğazkale is reachable without touching Çorum city at all. If you are coming up from Cappadocia, Hattusa is on your way and you never need to enter the provincial capital.

When to go

Spring and autumn. There is no need to circle around this. May to early June, September into October. The reason is not comfort, it is the visit itself.

Summer is hard. The plateau is shadeless and open. There are no trees at Hattusa, nowhere to hide along the wall line, and the top of the Yerkapı rampart under a midday sun is a punishment. If you must go in summer, break the day: be at the site by eight, out by eleven, spend midday in the museum, go to Yazılıkaya after four. It works, but it takes planning.

Winter is serious. This is the northern edge of the central Anatolian plateau, the altitude is high and the wind comes across open ground. It snows, roads get harder, and the condition of the site's internal vehicle road changes in winter. A photograph of Hattusa under snow is genuinely striking, that much is true, but as a visit it is demanding and some stops can be unreachable. Verify the state of the site and the roads officially before a winter trip.

Time of day. The Yazılıkaya reliefs read in raking light: early morning or late afternoon. Midday flattens them and erases the detail. The wider view of Hattusa is best in late afternoon, when the shadows of the ridges lift the terrain and you can finally read the city's topography.

Crowds are close to a non-issue. Hattusa is one of the least visited major archaeological sites in Turkey, and on a weekday you can find yourself effectively alone in it. That is one of the real privileges of coming here.

What to eat

Leblebi, roasted chickpeas. This is what Çorum is known for and the reputation is earned. The process is more involved than it sounds: the chickpeas go through days of soaking and roasting at different temperatures. There are workshops in Çorum doing this properly, and the result is not the same object you buy in a supermarket.

The variety surprises people: yellow, white, double-roasted, salted, spiced, sugar-coated. In the shops around the market you taste before you choose, and the owners enjoy explaining the differences. As a thing to take home, it is the most honest souvenir the province has.

The rest of the local cooking sits somewhere between central Anatolia and the Black Sea, weighted towards meat and dough. Çorum mantısı is the local take on the dumpling, made at a different size from the Kayseri version. İskilip dolması is the province's best-known dish: lamb and rice steamed for hours inside a cloth, specific to that town. Because it takes so long it is usually prepared ahead, so if you see it, take it. Keşkek and meat cooked in pans are common too.

We do not name restaurants. Use this instead: in the market around the clock tower there are busy workers' canteens, and you want the ones with İskilip dolması and Çorum mantısı on the board. In Boğazkale the options are very limited, so on your site day carry water and something to eat, because there is nothing out there.

FAQ

**Is Hattusa worth the detour?** The honest answer is that it depends on you, and we take the question seriously. If you have a real interest in history and will spend half an hour reading before you arrive, then yes: you are seeing one of the most significant archaeological sites in Turkey, and you will probably have it to yourself. If your travel runs on visuals and you want a view handed to you, then no. You will not see a standing city like Ephesus or Aphrodisias. You will see foundations. Knowing what those foundations are is the entire visit. Most people who arrive without that knowledge leave disappointed, and they are right to, because nobody warned them.

**Do I need a guide?** Close to it. Put it this way: either a guide or preparation, one of the two is mandatory. Hattusa does not explain itself. There are boards, but they cannot narrate a city, and they get lost in the size of the place. With a good guide, three hours turns Hattusa into the capital of an empire. Without a guide and without preparation, it is a stony hill. If you cannot hire someone, the free version works: study the site plan, read something about the Hittites, arrive knowing what the Treaty of Kadesh was. Even that much is enough.

**Can I walk Hattusa?** Physically yes, practically most people do not. The circuit is roughly 5 km, on a slope, with no shade. If you are in decent condition and have half a day, walking is the best way to understand the site, because you end up measuring the distances with your body. But in heat or wind it is a serious effort. Most visitors use the internal road, drive between the gates, and get out at each stop. That is a perfectly legitimate visit.

**Can Hattusa and Yazılıkaya be done the same day?** Yes, and they should be. They are inseparable, and Yazılıkaya is a few minutes' drive from the city. Do Hattusa in the morning and Yazılıkaya in afternoon light. Adding Alacahöyük to the same day makes it tight but it is possible. If you can spread it over two days, spread it.

**How many days do I need in Çorum?** One day: Boğazkale only, meaning Hattusa and Yazılıkaya. Two days: Boğazkale plus Alacahöyük and the Çorum museum. Three days: you add Şapinuva, İskilip and the Osmancık side. For most people the right answer is two. The third day pays off only if the province has actually caught you.

**Is it good with children?** Mixed. Yazılıkaya works well: the carvings are concrete, counting the gods turns into a game, and the area is small. Alacahöyük is similar. Hattusa is the hard one: large, hot or windy, unshaded, and what they are looking at is abstract. With young children, drive the circuit and get out at three gates only. Do not assume you will find toilets, a cafe or shade inside the site. Carry water.