view of Divriği

Divriği is a town in northeastern part of Central Anatolia, on the edge of Eastern Anatolia.

Understand

Citidel

Divriği is an ancient town, which was once a Byzantine site. By the 12th and 13th centuries, it was the capital of Turkic Emirate of Mengücek, and the remains of Great Mosque of 1229 and a citadel remain from the period.

Get in

By air

Nearest airport is located in Sivas, about 180 km or 3 hours away by road.

By bus

• Divriği Nazar Seyahat, Esenler Otogar no:34 (main bus station of Istanbul), ☏ +90 212 658 22 58 (Istanbul), +90 312 224 10 58 (Ankara). Company providing direct buses to Divriği from Istanbul and Ankara. 
• Divriği Özlem Tur and Divriği Birlik provide minibuses from Sivas every hour.

By train

The Doğu Express leaves Ankara daily towards 18:00 and runs overnight via Kayseri and Sivas to Divriği, arriving towards 08:00. It continues east to Erzincan for 10:30 and Erzurum for 14:30 to reach Kars at 18:30. The eastbound train leaves Kars at 08:00, reaching Erzurum at 12:00, Erzincan at 16:00, Divriği at 18:30, Sivas at 22:00, Kayseri towards 02:00 and Ankara at 08.30. There are couchettes and a buffet.

There's also a more expensive "tourist" version of this train, running daily year-round. It makes long stops for sightseeing eastbound at İliç, Erzincan and Erzurum; the westbound train makes long stops at Divriği and Bostankaya. Total travel time Ankara-Kars is 30 hours, and you're tied to the train schedule without flexibility of stopover. The accommodation is in standard sleeping cars, which have been purloined from the conventional train, so the travel experience on that has been degraded.

1 Divriği railway station is 500 m north of town along the main road.

See

Great Mosque and hospital of Divriği

Inside of the mosque

• Great Mosque (Ulu Cami) and adjoining medieval hospital (Darüşşifa) are outstanding examples of Seljuk architecture and have been in the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1985 . The Baroque style portal of this magnificent mosque is a real masterpiece of stonework. you can visit the Great Mosque only on Saturday and Sunday from 12:00 - 18:00 because of restoration works (May 2017).

Sleep

• Divriği Belediyesi Oteli, ☏ +90 346 418 18 25. Hotel run by the town council. Clean rooms with en suite bathrooms and balcony. No breakfast served. 20 TL. 

Connect

The telephone code of the town is (+90) 346.

Go next

It's possible to move on further east to Erzincan, Erzurum, and Kars by daily trains.

If you are intend on a little bit of adventure, take the Taş Yol ("Stone Road"), a series of tight tunnels that took more than a century to complete high above the gorge of the Euphrates River, east to Kemaliye, locally known as Eğin, a beautiful old town on the Karasu River.