Afyonkarahisar
— — the black rock that gave the town its name.
Not only on a wall.
“A black volcanic stump rising 226 metres above a plain of opium poppies — that is the kara hisar, the black fortress, and the town takes its name from it. The Hittites watched the road from this rock; so did the Phrygians, the Byzantines, the Seljuks, the Ottomans. The thermal springs come up hot a few kilometres out.
Afyonkarahisar, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Afyonkarahisar sits at about 1,020 metres on the inner western Anatolian plateau, in the upper basin of the Akarçay, a closed drainage that flows to Lake Eber. The province is in Turkey's Aegean Region administratively but reads as central Anatolia by climate and crop — long cold winters, hot dry summers, irrigated opium poppy in the rotation. The city is a national rail junction, where the lines from İstanbul, İzmir, and Konya meet.
The kara hisar — black fortress — is a basalt volcanic plug that rises 226 metres above the city, with a castle on the summit reached by a stone stair of around seven hundred steps. The site has been fortified since Hittite times, around the fourteenth century BC, and was held in turn by Phrygians, Byzantines, Seljuks, and Ottomans. The Ulu Cami at the foot of the rock, completed in 1272, is a Seljuk wooden-pillared mosque with original timber columns and capitals still in place.
Most visitors come for two things: the rock, and the water. Thermal springs at Ömer-Gecek and Sandıklı a few kilometres outside the city feed a cluster of spa hotels drawing on hot mineral water, a tradition that goes back to Roman use of the same springs. The town itself is the centre of Turkey's licit pharmaceutical opium poppy production, and a kilometre east of the Ulu Cami a small Zafer (Victory) Museum marks the staging of the 1922 Battle of Dumlupınar.