Last update September 24, 2026
Many tourists going directly from Istanbul to Cappadocia leave Ankara out altogether, and that is a mistake if you really want to get a sense of modern Turkey. As the capital, Ankara has a different significance compared to Istanbul’s long imperial history. Ankara was the city that Atatürk developed from a small town in Anatolia after he established the republic in 1923, and this history is evident in all the wide boulevards as well as in the large mausoleum constructed in his honour.
Anıtkabir, the tomb of Atatürk, is worth seeing even if you aren’t typically interested in monuments. It’s difficult to express its size through photographs: it’s a large stone complex situated on a hill above the city, surrounded by guards who are on duty around the clock, and there is a small museum underneath which deals with the war of independence and the early republic. The local people show it genuine respect, not merely out of a sense of duty to tourists, and on a weekday you will notice as many Turkish families as foreign visitors.
To see the older parts of the city, go to Ankara Castle and the old town around it, with its narrow streets leading up to the Roman-era walls and offering views over the more modern city below. The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations is located in the area and contains one of the best collections of Hittite relics anywhere, with the artifacts dating back thousands of years before the Ottomans or the Romans came to this part of the world. It is a smaller and less difficult museum to visit than the well-known ones in Istanbul, even though it doesn’t compromise much on quality.
Ankara won’t win over you the way Istanbul does, nor does it aim to; it is a capital city with broad streets and a more business-oriented atmosphere, and that is precisely what makes it worthwhile if you spend a day or two there: you experience a version of Turkey that has been shaped by the twentieth century rather than by the Ottoman centuries, which is what everyone otherwise comes to expect. If you stop off here either when travelling east or west, you’ll end up with a more complete understanding of the country than you would from just taking the coastal route.