Eastern Turkey

Gaziantep is the undisputed food capital of Turkey. The city has more restaurants per capita than anywhere else in the country, a culinary tradition that predates the Ottoman Empire, and a fanatical local pride in its cuisine that extends to baklava as cultural heritage. The Zeugma Mosaic Museum — containing some of the finest Roman…

Diyarbakir is built from black basalt — the volcanic stone of the surrounding landscape — and encircled by 5.8km of Roman walls that the Byzantines and later the Artuqid Turks reinforced and extended. The walls, the black stone, and the Tigris River winding below the city give Diyarbakir a distinctive gravity that no other Turkish…