Trabzon – formerly known as Trebizond – is a city on the Black Sea coast in northeastern Turkey, the capital of the province of the same name. Once located on the Great Silk Road, the appearance of this city is still famous for its charming mixture of many religions, languages and cultures. Throughout all historical periods, Trabzon was of great importance for foreign trade.
How to get to Trabzon
Airplanes from Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir arrive daily in Trabzon, the journey on any of them will take an average of one and a half to two hours. In addition, there are regular flights from Adana, Bursa and some European cities. The airport is located 6 kilometers from the city.
The bus can be reached from any major Turkish city. The journey from Istanbul will take 18 hours, the fare will cost 344-474 TRY, buses leave several times a day. If you want to enter Turkey from the Caucasus, you can take a bus to Tbilisi (about 12 hours).
vTrabzon can also be reached from Sochi by ferry along the Russian coast of the Black Sea. Ferries depart twice a week, a ticket costs from 7000 RUB. The prices on the page are for September 2022.
Restaurants
Many local dishes really deserve to be tried. The pide and köfte kebabs are especially worth highlighting. Pide is a bit like a pizza made with a special dough and a rather specific cheese. Also worth trying is Akcaabat koftesi, meatballs stuffed with garlic, which are especially tasty with ayran and piyaz, beans with lettuce. In addition, it is believed that the best bread in all of Turkey is baked in Trabzon.
In the city center there is an inexpensive but very good restaurant – Cardak Pide Salonu. And in Cevdet Akcay you can try kuzen – Turkish sausages in dough.
There are plenty of restaurants in the Akcaabat area, when you are there you should definitely stop by Nihat Usta, Keyvan, Cemil Usta or Korfez Restaurant. And after lunch, you can drink tea at Akcaabat Fisher Port.
If you’re in the mood for European coffee, head to the Keyif Coffee & Tea Store at Canbakkal İş Merkezi, where you’ll find a huge selection of teas and a great cappuccino for only 3 TRY.
Trabzon Hotels
We do not recommend saving heavily on hotels, because most of the cheap hotels in Trabzon are located below Ataturk Square, near the port, and providing accommodation in them is not always the main source of income. In addition, it will be difficult to find English-speaking staff there.
However, if you do not want to spend a lot on accommodation, you can stay at the Erzurum Hotel, located a hundred meters from Atatürk Alanı Square. Pretty nice quiet hotel with friendly staff that women traveling alone won’t have any problems.
Not far from the tourist office is the Nur Hotel. The staff speaks some English, a double room costs about 1080 TRY.
For more upscale hotels, you can opt for the Zorlu Grand Otel in the center of Trabzon or the Novotel. The Novotel is located in Yomra, but it won’t take you more than ten minutes to get to the center of Trabzon from there by bus or car.
Entertainment and attractions of Trabzon
Hagia Sophia Museum is a beautiful picturesque church that was first converted into a mosque and then into a museum where you can see amazing frescoes. The museum has a garden where you can have tea. You can get there by any bus marked Aya Sofya, departing from the northern part of Atatürk Alani Square. The complex operates from April to October daily from 9:00 to 18:00, from November to February – only from Thursday to Sunday from 8:00 to 16:00; in March – from Thursday to Sunday from 8:00 to 17:00. Entrance to the main church – 72 TRY, to a small village house with an ethnographic collection inside, also located on the territory of the Hagia Sophia complex, is paid separately.
In addition, it is worth visiting the Catholic Church of St. Mary, open to visitors from 2 to 3 from Thursday to Sunday, the mosques of Chashry, Gulbahar-Khatun and Yeni, in the past the former church of the patron saint of the city, St. Eugene, as well as the Ortahisar Mosque, the former church of Panayia -Chrysokefalos and Kuchuk-Ayvasil, a small Byzantine church.
The city fort, the Ortahisar Castle in the Old City and the Upper Citadel certainly deserve attention.
Trabzon has a city museum, open from Thursday to Sunday from 9:30 to 17:30 (lunch from 12:00 to 13:00), ticket price is 5 TRY, and the Atatürk Museum located in the Ataturk-Koshku Villa (open daily from 8:00 to 17:00).
Not far from the city, in the southeast, there is Bozepte Hill, on which there are two Christian monasteries preserved from the 14th century – Panagia Theoskepastos and the Armenian Kaymakli.
To the east of Trabzon, next to Caykara, there is a mountain lake called Uzunköl, which is also worth a visit.
Sümela Monastery is a stone-hewn monastery in the mountains south of Trabzon. It was built in the 4th century, shortly before the split of the Roman Empire. Entrance costs 25 TRY, and to get there, it will be most convenient to book an excursion, for example, in Eyce Tours.
In addition, it would not be superfluous to visit the Günes Sanat art gallery, built by 73-year-old artist Azmi Aytekin.
And a 20-30 minute walk from the main square is the Hüseyin Avni Stadium, where on the weekend you can watch the match of the local team Trabzonspor, which is considered the most successful outside of Istanbul.
For more information about the sights and about the city itself, you can visit the Trabzon Tourist Office, located one block from Atatürk Alani Square, opposite the Iskender Pasha Mosque. Opening hours: March-August from 8:00 to 19:00; September-February Mon-Fri from 8:00 to 17:00.
