Things to Do in Tokat: The Castle, Ballica Cave and Niksar

--- title: "Tokat travel guide: a thousand years on one street, Ballica Cave, Niksar and the truth about Zile" description: "An honest guide to Tokat: the Danishmendid and Seljuk buildings packed into Sulu Sokak, the museum that left the Gokmedrese in 2012, Ballica Cave and Niksar on the UNESCO tentative list rather than the World Heritage List, how much of Zile's veni vidi vici claim survives the ancient sources, Sebastopolis and Almus. How many days, when to go, what to eat." city: "Tokat" lang: "en" ---

Tokat: a thousand years compressed into one street

Most people who have heard of Tokat have heard of two things: a kebab and three Latin words supposedly spoken at Zile. Neither tells you anything useful about the province.

The city itself will probably not impress you on arrival, and it is better to say so now. Central Tokat looks like an ordinary Anatolian provincial capital: boulevards, concrete blocks, a pedestrianised shopping street. There is no picturesque old town waiting around the corner. What there is, running through the middle of the city, is a street called Sulu Sokak, and along a few hundred metres of it stand a Danishmendid madrasa, a Seljuk madrasa, an Ottoman covered market, caravanserais, bathhouses and small mosques, one after another. Very few streets in Turkey carry that density of surviving building. Tokat's story is not in its squares. It is on that line.

There is a reason for the concentration. Tokat sat on the trade route that crossed Anatolia from east to west, and for centuries both caravans and armies came through. The city grew rich, it built, and then the route shifted and Tokat was left beside the road rather than on it. The buildings stayed. The attention did not. What you see today is the result: an accumulation that is real but not manicured.

The rest of the province is scattered in the same way. North of the city is Niksar, which looks like a modest district town and was the capital of the Danishmendid dynasty from 1077. West is Zile, with a mound-top citadel and the remains of a Roman theatre on its eastern slope. South, a Roman city surfaces between the houses of a small town called Sulusaray. West again, in Pazar district, Ballica Cave runs five storeys down into the mountain of Akdag.

Who is it for? Anyone interested in buildings, in layered history, in excavation sites. Anyone who would rather not queue. Anyone willing to accept that a place can be dense without being touristic. Who is it not for? People who want views and cafes, people who expect everything restored and captioned, and people hoping to do it without a car.

The most common mistake is treating Tokat as a lunch stop. The second, and it is just as costly, is spending two days in the city centre and skipping Niksar entirely.

Quick answer

Tokat works as a walkable city centre plus a set of district trips by car, in spring or autumn.

• The city: castle, the Sulu Sokak line, the museum, the hans and the hamams are all walkable. One full day.
• Niksar: about 55 km north. Worth more than half a day.
• Ballica Cave: in Pazar district, roughly 33 km by road. Half a day.
• Zile and Sulusaray: west and south, opposite directions. Half a day each.
• A car: effectively required. The districts are far apart and point different ways.
• Food: Tokat kebabı, bat, keskek, Zile grape molasses and Tokat walnuts.

1. Tokat Kalesi

The castle sits on the rock mass above the city, visible from almost everywhere in the centre. Set expectations: it is largely ruined. Sources record a pentagonal plan with eight towers; what stands today is foundation work and vaulting. If you came for intact battlements, you will be disappointed.

You climb it for the height. From the top you see the Kazova, the plain the Yesilirmak has opened up, and the line where the old city stops below. Why anyone founded a city here makes sense only from up here.

The dating is not settled and no source I found names a founder and a year with confidence. Occupation reaches back to the fifth and sixth centuries, Byzantium held it until 1074, Danishmend Gazi took it, the Ottomans repaired it. Layered is the honest word.

Two stories attach to it. One says tunnels linked this castle to Turhal and Niksar; the 2010 restoration found nothing supporting it. The other says Vlad III was imprisoned here. I relay both, confirm neither.

The climb is steep; verify access.

2. Tokat Museum, in the Arastali Bedesten

Clear one thing up first, because half of what is written online is out of date. Tokat Museum was in the Gokmedrese from 1926 until 2012. On 18 September 2012 it moved. It is now in the Arastali Bedesten on Sulu Sokak. Plenty of sources still treat the two as one place, and English Wikipedia gives a coordinate for the museum that contradicts the street address printed on its own page.

The building justifies the stop by itself. It dates to the early fifteenth century, probably the reign of Mehmed I, and it is a bedesten: an enclosed, masonry market hall built for goods worth locking up. The province's archaeology and ethnography collections sit inside it.

The museum's real use is sorting. Tokat has Danishmendid, Seljuk, Ilkhanid and Ottoman work side by side, and telling them apart on the street is hard. Come here first and Sulu Sokak becomes legible.

Half an hour is enough, but put it at the start of your day. Verify the hours officially.

3. Yagibasan Madrasa, the Cukur Medrese

A few steps from the bedesten, sunk below street level. That is where the local name comes from: cukur means hollow, so this is the sunken madrasa.

Its importance is in its date, not its appearance. Nizameddin Yagibasan had it built between 1148 and 1157, which makes it Danishmendid work and one of the oldest known madrasas in Anatolia. The domed courtyard matters too: it is counted among the first examples of the domed-courtyard type, a plan that spread widely afterwards. The dome is roughly 14 metres across with a 10 metre opening at its centre.

Be ready for the condition. The building is not in original state: rubble stone, undecorated, worn. Do not come looking for ornament, come looking for chronology. The Seljuk sultan Izzeddin Keykavus II repaired it, and the Ottomans later used it as shelter for migrants.

Its twin is in Niksar, and the argument over which was the first madrasa in Anatolia runs between those two buildings. I deal with that in the Niksar entry.

4. Ali Pasa Hamami

Tokat has no shortage of Ottoman bathhouses. This one earns its entry for a different reason: it was never converted into a museum. It still works. You are not filing past a rope to look at cold marble, you can use it.

It is cut stone, domed, a double bath: separate sections for women and men. The men's section has a cross plan with the heated navel stone at the centre under a dome. The women's keeps the progression of changing room, warm room, hot room.

Be careful about the date. My source says it was renewed and put back into service in 1886 by the Directorate General of Foundations. That is a renovation date, not a foundation date. I found no reliable source for when it was first built, so I name no century.

The bath sits east of the Ali Pasa Mosque, part of the same complex, about 150 metres west. Take both in one stop. Opening days and the hours allotted to women and men change, so verify before you go.

5. Tashan

At the northern end of Sulu Sokak, a two-storey Ottoman han around an open courtyard, in cut stone and brick. It is also called the Voyvoda Han, because Tokat became a voivodeship in the mid seventeenth century and the voivodes gave the building to the city.

This is the easiest stop in the guide. It was damaged in the 1939 earthquake, sat closed and cut off from the city between 1997 and 2007, and reopened after a restoration finished in 2007. The courtyard is now a tea garden and the rooms are craft shops. There are 112 rooms in total.

This is also where you can watch Tokat yazması being made. Yazma is block printing: carved wooden blocks stamp dye onto cloth, and Tokat is one of the centres of the craft. Some benches here are working ones rather than displays.

An honest note. This is a restored, commercialised space and it lacks the raw quality of the rest of Sulu Sokak. But it is the sensible place to sit and let the city settle before carrying on.

6. Gokmedrese

Near the northern end of Sulu Sokak, a two-storey Seljuk madrasa dated 1277. It is the most photographed building in Tokat and the city's emblem.

You will often read that the name, which means sky or blue madrasa, comes from turquoise tilework on the facade. I could not confirm it. The sources I checked do not explain the name's origin, and gave no confident name for the patron.

The turning point here is administrative rather than architectural. From 1926 to 2012 this was Tokat Museum. For nearly a century the city kept its collections in the cells of a Seljuk madrasa. In 2012 they moved to the bedesten and the building emptied out.

Restoration ran from 2021 to 2023. Whether it is now open, and what is inside if it is, I could not establish. I would rather write that than guess. Verify officially before walking to the door, because buildings like this stay shut long after the scaffolding comes off.

Worth seeing from outside regardless: the facade shows how a Seljuk madrasa was organised around its courtyard.

7. Hatuniye Camii

East of the Sulu Sokak line, and the most polished Ottoman building in Tokat. Bayezid II had it built in 1485 in honour of his mother, Gulbahar Hatun, and it was never meant to be a mosque alone. It was designed as a complex: mosque, madrasa and imaret, the last being a kitchen that fed the poor.

The architecture catches the transition into classical Ottoman. The square main space is covered by a dome on a twelve-sided drum, with a single-domed bay to either side. The entrance portico carries five domes on six columns. The marble portal is carved with muqarnas, the stalactite-like corbelling inherited from Seljuk practice, and the wooden doors are joined without nails.

It is read as the last phase of the mosque type with side halls, which makes it transitional. In a city this thick with Danishmendid and Seljuk work, it gives you the comparison: this is what the imperial Ottoman style looked like when it arrived.

It is a working mosque. Watch the prayer times, and women need a headscarf.

8. Latifoglu Konagi

Everything so far has been stone: madrasas, hans, a bathhouse, mosques. Latifoglu is where Tokat shows you how people lived, which is why it changes the balance of this guide.

It is a museum house, meaning you go inside and walk the rooms. The building is Ottoman mansion architecture, run under the Tokat Museum Directorate. Since most of the city's building stock is either in religious use or locked, this is one of the few addresses where you can see how the interior of a Tokat konak was organised.

Let me say what I do not know. I could not find the construction date or the patron in a source I trust. There are widely repeated accounts, but I am not passing them on. I would rather leave the year blank than invent one.

One more thing: this pin is approximate. The coordinate appears in a single source and I found no second record to confirm it. Get to the district and ask for the last hundred metres. It is northwest of the clock tower and locals can point to it.

Verify visiting hours officially.

9. Tokat Saat Kulesi

South of the centre, in the Behzat quarter, away from the Sulu Sokak line but within walking distance of it.

The tower went up in 1902 for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Abdulhamid II's accession. Towns across the empire raised clock towers for that same anniversary, and this is Tokat's contribution to the series. It was built by a master mason recorded as Hristo, in cut stone, originally three storeys. A fourth was added in 1915, bringing it to 33 metres.

The public helped pay for it, with the governor Bekir Pasa and the mayor Mutevellioglu Enver Bey leading the effort. It was sited so that it could be seen from anywhere in the city, and it still can be.

The mechanism drives four faces from a single movement. According to the record it strikes on the hour and the half hour, two minutes apart.

I could not confirm whether you can go inside. Plan it as a building you look at from the street, and treat anything more as a bonus you should verify officially.

10. Tokat Mevlevihanesi

Right beside the clock tower, on the bank of the Behzat stream, a small museum converted from a Mevlevi lodge.

Its value is in its scale and its accessibility. Tokat's inventory of religious buildings is overwhelming: dozens of mosques, prayer rooms, dervish lodges, tombs and baths. Most are either in active religious use or locked. The Mevlevihane is one of the few you can walk into and look around.

The Mevlevi order, the one Western readers know through the whirling ceremony, had real weight in Tokat's cultural life. A lodge was never only a place of worship. It was an institution where music, poetry and training ran together, and standing inside one is not the same as reading that sentence.

It is small: half an hour, and it does not deserve a dedicated day. But it costs almost nothing because it shares a corner with the clock tower. If you extend your walk south, take the two together.

I could not verify the scope of the collection or the visiting arrangements. Verify officially.

11. Gaziosmanpasa Museum and the Ataturk House

South of the centre, two adjacent buildings holding two separate museums.

Gazi Osman Pasa was from Tokat, and for this city that is not a footnote. He is the commander who held Plevne, in modern Bulgaria, against Russian forces for months during the war of 1877 to 1878, and he is the first name Tokat reaches for when it introduces itself. His name is on the stadium, the boulevard and much else. The museum is built around his story and that siege.

Next door, the Ataturk House and Ethnography Museum adds a second layer: an ethnographic display inside a mansion, with a section on Ataturk.

Together they form the southern end of your city walk. You can get here on foot from Sulu Sokak, though not in a straight line; you cut through the working city to do it.

Calibrate your expectations. These are not major museums. Come to see how Tokat narrates itself, not for the size of the holdings. Verify the hours officially.

12. Comana Pontica

About 9 km northeast of the centre, near the village of Gumenek, on the west bank of the Yesilirmak.

Let me say what it was, because the name raises expectations. Comana Pontica was a temple state dedicated to the goddess Ma, established around 281 BC under the Kingdom of Pontus. It kept its standing after Rome took the region in 63 BC and carried on into the Byzantine period: a settlement that revolved around a sanctuary and ran its own economy from it.

Now the part that matters for your day. The site was located in 2009 using ground-penetrating radar, and Middle East Technical University has excavated. The area has been damaged by irrigation channels and a new highway. There is no standing temple here, no colonnade, no theatre.

I include it because skipping Tokat's ancient layer would misrepresent the province. But go knowing the difference between visiting an excavation and visiting a monument. If archaeology is not your interest, skip this entry with a clear conscience.

13. Ballica Magarasi

The most visited natural site in the province and the clearest day trip from the city. It is in Ballica village, Pazar district, inside Akdag mountain, 33 km from central Tokat by road and 8 km from Pazar town.

The cave runs 680 metres, on five levels, through nine chambers, and its formation is estimated to have begun 3.4 million years ago. Inside are stalactites, stalagmites, columns and pools. It is recorded as the only cave in Turkey with onion stalactites, a concentric formation that grows in layers.

Now the UNESCO question, because it is misreported constantly. Ballica is not on the World Heritage List. It joined Turkey's Tentative List on 12 April 2019 as the "Nature Park of Ballica Cave", reference 6403, criteria (vii) and (viii). A tentative list is a roster of sites a country may nominate later, not an inscription. I confirmed this against UNESCO's record. The area was separately declared a nature park in 2007.

Visits are guided. Inside you climb 19 metres and descend 75, so the stairs are not optional.

14. Mahperi Hatun Kervansarayi

In the centre of Pazar town, directly on the road to Ballica. It is also known as the Hatun Han.

I include it for a practical reason: you drive past it anyway, and it costs ten minutes. It is a Seljuk road caravanserai, one of the fortified stopping places built for caravans. Across Anatolia these were spaced roughly a day's travel apart, and that network explains why Tokat holds so many buildings. The province was infrastructure.

The scale tells you the purpose on sight: thick walls, a narrow entrance, a defensible volume inside. This was not built for comfort. It was built so a merchant with loaded animals could survive the night.

The name attaches it to Mahperi Hatun, a woman of the Seljuk court. The attribution is widely repeated; I pass it on rather than adjudicate it. I found no construction date I trust, so I give no year.

Fold it into your Ballica day. It does not need one of its own.

15. Niksar Kalesi

The most underrated place in the province: the gap between what Niksar looks like and what it was is the widest here. Today it reads as a district town of forty thousand. In 1077 it became the capital of the Danishmendids.

The castle stands on the hill between the Maduru and Canakci streams. Around and below it are timber mosques, an arasta, bathhouses and dozens of historic fountains, and the housing keeps its wooden character.

This surprises people, but it has official recognition. Turkey submitted Niksar to the UNESCO Tentative List on 2 May 2018 as "Early Period of Anatolian Turkish Heritage: Niksar, The Capital of Danishmend Dynasty", reference 6344. Like Ballica: tentative, not inscribed.

Just west of the castle is the Yagibasan Madrasa. I have given it its own entry below, because Tokat's most repeated claim rests on it.

16. Yagibasan Madrasa, Niksar

West of the castle, in Niksar's historic core. Nizameddin Yagibasan had it built in the mid twelfth century, and inscriptions record a major repair in 1247. It is a square-planned Danishmendid madrasa with two iwans and a courtyard domed on pendentives. It sits on a slope, which is why the plan is not symmetrical.

Set expectations: it survives largely as wall remnants. You come here to look at the source of a claim, not at an intact monument.

The claim is this. Turkey's UNESCO file calls it "the first madrasa of Anatolian Turkish Civilisation" and dates it 1157 to 1158. Treat that carefully: it is the nominating party's own text. The same patron's madrasa in central Tokat is dated 1148 to 1157, which would make the twin earlier. Turkish Wikipedia flags the word "first" with a citation-needed tag. Among the oldest is defensible. First is not.

This pin is also approximate. The coordinate appears in one source, and the only other record does not confirm it but places it 220 metres away. Walk from the castle and ask for the last step.

17. Zile Kalesi

About 65 km west of the city. The castle sits on a mound and commands the plain, an acropolis.

What you come to see is on the eastern slope: the remains of a Roman theatre, with rock tombs. Who built the castle and when is not established. The variation in wall heights, tower forms and masonry indicates a structure repaired, extended and used over long stretches of time rather than built once. Roman and Byzantine fragments found here argue for a first-century AD date.

Now the famous part. Zile is ancient Zela, and Caesar defeated Pharnaces here on 2 August 47 BC. That much is solid. But the claim that "veni, vidi, vici" was uttered here does not survive contact with the sources, none of which put the phrase on the battlefield. Appian has it in a letter to the Senate. Plutarch has it in a report to his friend Amantius in Rome. Suetonius has the words displayed during the Pontic triumph, a parade held in Rome. The battle happened at Zile; the phrase happened in Rome.

18. Sebastopolis

Southwest of the city, in Sulusaray district. It is a long drive, and whether it belongs in your route depends on how you feel about that.

Sebastopolis was a Roman city and the town of Sulusaray sits directly on top of it. That is both the interest and the problem: the ancient city has been uncovered in fragments between modern houses. A bath and a church have come to light. Excavation started at a small scale in the 1980s and has continued in short campaigns. The exposed sections are presented as an open-air museum.

One correction. Some sources still describe Sulusaray as a town attached to Artova district. That is out of date; Sulusaray became a district in its own right on 20 May 1990.

Calibrate expectations. This is not Ephesus. You are looking at Roman remains between the streets of a small town. But if archaeology interests you, it shows how an ancient city ends up underneath a living one, which is the normal fate of ancient cities and rarely this visible. Verify before driving out.

19. Almus Baraji

About 35 km east of the city, in Almus. The coordinate I give is the dam wall; the reservoir runs east from there along the valley.

The dam is on the Yesilirmak and was built between 1964 and 1966. It is an earth-fill structure, 78 metres high from the riverbed, and the reservoir covers 31.30 square kilometres at normal level. This is not a pond.

The function of this entry is balance. The rest of the guide is stone, brick and trench. The Almus side is green, forested and high. The road along the shore is one of the easier drives in the province, and you will see people fishing, picnicking and looking at the water, which after several days of madrasas is a reasonable thing to want.

An honest note: this is not a developed tourist area. Infrastructure along the shore is limited and distances take longer than the map implies. Further east, in Resadiye, there is also Lake Zinav and its canyon. Do not combine it with Almus in one day; the road is serious.

When to go

Spring and autumn. May, June, September and October let you do both the city and the countryside without fighting the weather. Tokat sits in a transition zone between the Central Anatolian interior and the Black Sea, which in practice means hot summers and hard winters.

Be honest about summer. In July and August the Kazova heats up and walking around buildings in the city becomes work. There is little shade and a lot of slope. In those months the Almus side and the higher ground earn their place. Head northeast instead of staying in the centre.

Ballica has no season. Inside it is 17 to 24 degrees all year, so the cave is the same whatever the sky is doing. In summer that is an advantage rather than a curiosity: it is cool in there when nothing else is.

Winter is quiet in Tokat, and I do not mean that as a recommendation. Mountain roads take snow and ice, the routes toward Niksar and Almus get harder, and most of the rural sites lose their accessibility. If you are coming in winter, concentrate on the city and accept that.

Short version: May and October for the buildings, June for Almus, and any month at all for the cave.

How many days

One day covers the city. The castle, the Sulu Sokak line, the museum, Tashan, the hamam and the clock tower fit into it, they are all within walking distance, and the density is all there anyway.

Two days is the realistic answer. Give the second to Niksar. If you also want Ballica you need a third, because Niksar is north, Pazar is west, and they do not combine.

Four or five days brings in Zile, Sulusaray and Almus. These point in different directions and each one spends half a day on the road. Build your route by direction, not by distance.

Getting there

Bring a car. I am not softening it. The centre walks, but Niksar, Pazar, Zile, Sulusaray and Almus radiate outward on different roads, and stitching them into a trip on public transport is difficult.

There are buses and minibuses to the district towns. The problem is not reaching the district town, it is the last leg. Ballica village is 8 km beyond Pazar town, and Comana is out by a village. Public transport strands you at the end.

Tokat has an airport, but frequencies are limited and schedules change, so verify officially if you are thinking of flying. By road the connections from Samsun, Amasya and Sivas are straightforward. Pairing Amasya with Tokat is a common and sensible route: the two provinces are neighbours and they complement each other, since Amasya has the setting and the tombs while Tokat has the density of buildings.

Winter tyres are a real requirement in season. The final stretches to rural sites can be unsurfaced.

What to eat

Tokat kebabı is the dish the province is known for, and the name misleads English speakers. This is not meat on a skewer. Lamb, potato, aubergine, tomato, garlic and tail fat are threaded onto a spit and cooked in a stone oven, so the meat and the vegetables cook together in the same fire and the fat runs down through everything. It usually needs ordering in advance and it takes time. Plan your day around it rather than turning up hungry at one o'clock and hoping.

Bat is the local dish nobody outside Tokat knows. It is made from green lentils and bulgur with herbs, sharpened with something sour, and served cool. In summer it is the better order.

Keskek comes from the tradition of wedding and communal cooking: wheat and meat pounded together and cooked slowly until the texture pulls into threads. It is not unique to Tokat, but it is alive here.

Zile's grape molasses and Tokat walnuts are the agricultural side, and Zile has an old tradition of sugar and molasses production.

Then there is Tokat yazması, which you cannot eat but can buy: hand block-printed cloth, with benches still working in Tashan.

I am naming no restaurants. In the bazaar, the place where the shopkeepers eat at midday is usually the right one.

FAQ

**Is Tokat Museum in the Gokmedrese?**

Not any more. The museum was in the Gokmedrese from 1926 until 18 September 2012, when it moved to the Arastali Bedesten on Sulu Sokak. That is where the collection is now. The Gokmedrese is a separate building that underwent restoration between 2021 and 2023, and you should verify officially whether it is open before going. A lot of pages, including some in English, still merge the two, and English Wikipedia's coordinate for the museum contradicts the address on its own page.

**Is Ballica Cave a UNESCO World Heritage Site?**

No. It is on the Tentative List, which is a different thing. The "Nature Park of Ballica Cave" was added on 12 April 2019, reference 6403, under criteria (vii) and (viii). A tentative list records what a country might nominate in future; it confers no World Heritage status. The same applies to Niksar, which entered the tentative list on 2 May 2018 under reference 6344. I confirmed both directly against UNESCO's records. If you see either described as a World Heritage Site, that is wrong.

**Did Caesar say "veni, vidi, vici" at Zile?**

The battle was at Zile. The phrase was almost certainly not. Caesar defeated Pharnaces at Zela, modern Zile, on 2 August 47 BC, and that part is well attested. But no ancient source places the words on the battlefield. Appian has them in a letter to the Senate, Plutarch in a report sent to Amantius in Rome, and Suetonius has them displayed as an inscription during the Pontic triumph in Rome. The connection between Zile and the victory is real. The connection between Zile and the sentence is a later convenience. Signs in the town state it with a confidence the sources do not have.

**Is the madrasa at Niksar really the first in Anatolia?**

It is disputed, and the dispute is worth knowing before you read the sign. Turkey's UNESCO tentative file calls the Yagibasan Madrasa at Niksar "the first madrasa of Anatolian Turkish Civilisation" and dates it 1157 to 1158. But the same patron's madrasa in central Tokat is dated 1148 to 1157, which would make it earlier. A nomination file is an argument made by an interested party, not an independent verdict. The safe formulation: these two buildings are among the oldest known madrasas in Anatolia and among the first of the domed-courtyard type. Avoid first.

**Can I visit Tokat without a car?**

The city yes, the province no. The castle, Sulu Sokak, the museum, Tashan, the hamam, the clock tower and the Mevlevihane are all walkable, and two days in the centre is perfectly workable without driving. But Niksar, Ballica, Zile, Sulusaray and Almus point in different directions with no useful connections between them. You will find buses to the district towns; the places you actually want are not in the district towns. If you will not drive, concentrate on the centre and look into a local tour for Ballica.