28/1/2008
TRABZON
Category: Belirtilmemiş
TRABZON
Trabzon is the largest city and the second commercial port of the Black Sea in Turkey after Samsun, and it is also the center of an important agricultural region where , tobacco, tea, hazelnuts, rice are intensively grown. The city is built in the shape of an amphitheatre against woody hillsides overlooking the sea. It has narrow streets and old Ottoman wooden houses.
Trabzon is linked to İstanbul and Ankara by daily flights.
Ancient Trapezos successively came under the domination of the kings of Pontus (Euxeinos Pontos is the Greek name given to the Black Sea and the north-east region of Anatolia) and later the Romans. It was an important commercial port at the beginning of the main caravan route between the Black Sea and Persia via the Armenian mountains. It was destroyed by the Goths in 260 AD. Rebuilt and strongly fortified by Byzantine emperor Justinian, the city resisted the assaults of the Seljuks and the Mongols. In 1204, when Constantinople, the Byzantine capital, was seized and sacked by the Crusaders, two princes who were grandsons of Andronikos Komnenos I, fled. With the help of Georgian Queen Tamara, Alexius Komnenus took the title of emperor and founded the Independent Empire of Trebizond where he and his successors held a somptuous court. Later they made alliances with the Crusaders and the Palaeologus after the Byzantine restoration in Constantinople (1261). Trebizond could repel the assaults of the Seljuk Turks and the Mongols, but the last Byzantine bastion was finally seized by Mehmet the Conqueror in 1461.
Haghia Sophia, this wonderful byzantine church in the middle of a garden overlooking the sea, was transformed into a mosque by the Ottomans. Between 1916 and 1918 during the Russian occupation, it was used as a depot. In 1964 it was finally opened as a museum. The monument is decorated with splendid frescoes from the 13th century. They are the most beautiful homogeneous group of frescoes that can be seen in Turkey.
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The Citadel and the walls |
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