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Trabzon

City in TürkiyeTrabzon lies on the Black Sea coast in the northeast of Türkiye, with the Pontic Mountains rising to the south and the border with Georgia further east.

What it's known for

Some Silk Road caravans from Asia stopped at Trabzon's port, where European merchants bought their goods. From 1204 until the Ottoman conquest in 1461 it was the capital of the Empire of Trebizond. It is famous across Türkiye for anchovies called hamsi, and its main exports include hazelnuts and tea.

Fun facts

  1. Greek colonists from Miletus founded it in 756 BC as Trapezous, from the Greek word for 'table', after the flat, table-like hill at its centre.
  2. Sumela Monastery, said to have been founded around AD 386, sits on a ledge of a steep cliff at about 1,200 m in the Pontic Mountains south of the city.
  3. The Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was born in Trabzon in 1494.

Finding it on the globe

Follow Türkiye's Black Sea coast east past Samsun, almost to Georgia: Trabzon is on the shore a little before the coast bends northeast toward the border.

Sources: Wikipedia: Trabzon, Wikipedia: Sumela Monastery