Van

About Van

Van is a city in eastern Turkey's Van Province, on the eastern shore of Lake Van. It is the capital and largest city of Van Province.

Van has a long history as a major urban area. It has been a large city since the first millennium BCE, initially as Tushpa, the capital of the kingdom of Urartu from the 9th century BCE to the 6th century BCE, and later as the center of the Armenian kingdom of Vaspurakan. Turkic presence in Van and in the rest of Anatolia started as a result of Seljuk victory at the Battle of Malazgirt (1071) against the Byzantine Empire.

Van was densely populated by Armenians until the Armenian genocide in the 1910s. Today, it is mostly inhabited by Kurds.

Archaeological excavations and surveys carried out in Van Province indicate that the history of human settlement in this region goes back at least as far as 5000 BCE. The Tilkitepe Mound, which is on the shores of Lake Van and a few kilometres to the south of Van Castle, is the only source of information about the oldest culture of Van.

Under the ancient name of Tushpa, Van was the capital of the Urartian kingdom in the 9th century BCE. The early settlement was centered on the steep-sided...

Overview adapted from Wikipedia under CC BY-SA. Photography via Wikimedia Commons.