Current Time in Sivas, Turkey

Sivas lies in the heart of Anatolia, on a high plain beside the upper course of the Kizilirmak, the longest river entirely within Turkey. At almost thirteen hundred metres above sea level, surrounded by bare rolling steppe and distant mountains, it experiences one of the harshest climates in the country, with long freezing winters, deep snow and short hot summers. The city is the capital of the largest province in Turkey by area, a region of wide horizons, sheep pastures and scattered villages.

Around three hundred and seventy thousand people live here. Sivas is a regional centre of administration, education and industry, with cement, textile and food processing plants, iron ore and chromium mining in the province, and a long-standing role as the most important railway junction in Anatolia, where the lines from Ankara, Samsun, Erzurum and the south all meet.

The city is ancient. Known as Sebasteia in Roman and Byzantine times, it was a bishopric and a fortress guarding the routes into eastern Anatolia. After the Seljuk conquest it became one of the great cities of medieval Anatolia, a wealthy stop on the caravan roads between Persia and the Mediterranean, and later served the Ilkhanid and Ottoman states. Tamerlane sacked it brutally in 1400. Its most celebrated modern moment came in September 1919, when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk convened the Sivas Congress in a school building here, uniting the regional resistance movements and setting out the principles that led to the founding of the Turkish Republic.

Sivas has one of the finest collections of Seljuk architecture in existence, gathered around a single square. The Gok Medrese, with its twin minarets and richly carved blue-tiled portal, the Cifte Minareli Medrese, the Buruciye Medrese and the Sifaiye Medrese, a hospital and medical school founded in 1217 and among the earliest in the world, stand within a few minutes of one another, their stonework covered in geometric and floral carving of extraordinary quality. The building where the congress met is now a museum devoted to the independence struggle, and the great mosque, the citadel hill and old stone bridges complete the picture. In the district of Divrigi, some two hours away, the Great Mosque and Hospital is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, its doorways carved with astonishing sculptural fantasy unlike anything else in Islamic architecture.

The province gives its name to the Kangal, the powerful livestock guardian dog bred here for centuries to protect flocks from wolves. At Kangal a thermal spring is famous for small fish that nibble the skin of bathers and have long been used to treat psoriasis. Local food features spicy meatballs, stuffed vine leaves and slow-cooked lamb, and the region is known for folk poetry, saz music and Alevi cultural traditions.

Trains, a modern airport, and highways link the city in every direction, and a high-speed line to Ankara has been built. Sivas Cumhuriyet University is one of the larger universities in central Anatolia.

Sivas is essential for anyone interested in Seljuk art and in the founding of modern Turkey.