SINOP TARIHI CEZAEVI

Built within the walls of the ancient Sinop fortress, this is one of Turkey's oldest prisons.

The fortress. Situated on the Black Sea coast, the fortress was built in the ^7th century BC, when the city was refounded as a Greek colony. It was renovated by the Persians, the Kingdom of Pontus, the Romans and the Byzantines. When the Seljuks seized Sinop, they divided the fortress in two. From then on, it served as a dungeon and shipyard until 1568. The ruins of the city walls, built by the Seljuks after its capture in 1214, still surround the narrowest part of the peninsula. Kumkapı (the Golden Gate), is the most important of the city's seven gates. Its remains still stand on a 15-kilometre stretch of beach. As for the citadel walls, they are made up of disparate elements: shafts and capitals, stones and bas-reliefs.

The prison. Erected in 1882 in the southern part of the fortress by Governor Veysel Paşa, the prison is U-shaped. Located inside a fortress, it was considered a high-security penitentiary from which it was impossible to escape. In 1997, the prison was abandoned and the inmates transferred to a new building. Famous people have been incarcerated here, hence the abundance of Turkish literature on the subject.

The dungeon. At the entrance to the prison, on the right, stands the old dungeon, used as a prison after 1568, in which enemies of the Ottoman Empire were locked up.