Castle restoration in Turkey’s heartland sheds light on history

SİVAS

The restoration of the Sivas Castle in Turkey’s Central Anatolia region has received a shot in the arm thanks to the initiation of a work to unearth the inner castle defense walls.

Believed to be constructed 4,000 years ago and destroyed by Timur during his Anatolia Campaign in the 1400s, the castle became the focal point of a project launched to integrate the Blue Madrasah and the Ulu Mosque around the marvel.

Noting that initial works have been carried out around the castle for two years, Erdal Eser, an academic from Cumhuriyet University, said that they aim to unearth the remains of some of the defense walls around the castle to see how far it continued.

Eser also emphasized that remarkable findings about the history of the city were obtained within the scope of the fieldworks.

“We tried to understand and perceive the material produced by Sivas itself in the content of the [unearthed] buildings. We also started to learn about the centers that Sivas is connected to due to imported materials from abroad,” he added.

“We also started to catch very dense plaster and tile material related to a palace that is one of the very early dates among the palaces of the Seljuk period in Anatolia,” he noted.