Lake Van is shared between the provinces of Van and Bitlis, and most of what there is to see stands on its shores or on its islands: the tenth-century Church of the Holy Cross on Akdamar, the Urartian castle on its rock at the water's edge by the city of Van, the tomb towers and the vast Seljuk cemetery of Ahlat on the north-western shore, and the castle ruins of Adilcevaz. The same two provinces hold the Urartian strongholds of Çavuştepe and Hoşap, the bird lake at Erçek, Süphan Mountain, the crater lakes of Nemrut and the old town of Bitlis. The places below are grouped by area, and each has its own guide on this site.
Akdamar and Gevaş
Akdamar, the second largest island in the lake, lies about four kilometres off the shore in the Gevaş district, fifty kilometres west of Van, and the crossing takes some twenty minutes. Gagik I Ardzruni, who ruled the kingdom of Vaspurakan, had its Church of the Holy Cross built in 915–921 as part of a palace complex, to designs by an architect named Manuel. After Basil II ended the kingdom in 1021 and 1022 it became a monastery, and from 1113 to 1895 it was the seat of the region's Armenian patriarchate. Abandoned early in the twentieth century, it was restored and opened as a monument museum in 2007, and in 2015 it went onto the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list.
The carving on the outer walls is the reason to go. Figures show Jonah, David facing Goliath, Adam and Eve at the tree, Daniel with the lions and three youths in a furnace; on the west front, Gagik I offers a model of the church to Christ. The reliefs are full in the body and flat in the face, so they come alive in sunlight and go dull in shadow or haze, which is worth remembering when choosing a day. The island's name is explained by a local legend: a young man who swam across each night to meet Tamara drowned in a storm, crying out Ah Tamara.
In Gevaş itself, the historic cemetery at Hiset is described as the second largest medieval Turkish Islamic cemetery in Anatolia. Its emblem is the twelve-sided tomb tower that Melik İzzeddin Şir built in 1335 for his daughter Halime Hatun, in neatly cut white limestone carved with bands of plants, geometry and verses of the Qur'an. Minibuses heading for Gevaş and Akdamar start at Van's intercity bus station. In winter, the Abalı ski centre on Artos Dağı, about 45 kilometres from Van, has pistes facing the lake and Akdamar Island, with snow from late December to early April.
Van: the castle, the museum and the old city
Van Castle is an Urartian fortress of massive stone on a sheer rock at the lake shore, five kilometres from the city: 1,800 metres long and 80 high, founded between 840 and 825 BC by Sarduri son of Lutipri, above Tuşba, the Urartian capital. King Sarduri's annals were found here when Russian archaeologists dug in 1915 and 1916. The Kaya Çelebi Mosque, finished in 1663, stands just behind the castle walls, with a mihrab framed in muqarnas. In the old city of Van, the Hüsrev Paşa complex of 1567–68 is attributed to Mimar Sinan; its mosque, with tiles and baroque painted decoration, is in use again after repairs completed in 2013.
The Van Museum, opened in 2019 in a new building north-east of the castle, gives nine of its twenty-three halls to Urartu and its own account calls it the world's richest collection of Urartian finds. Look for a bronze plate from a horse breastplate showing a war chariot, the first such Urartian piece found with a battle scene, and a white marble stamp seal with Gilgamesh as master of animals. Toprakkale, among the rocks of Zımzım dağı north-east of Van, was Rusahinili, the second capital, founded by Rusa II; on the lake-facing slopes of the same mountain, the Meherkapı niche lists seventy-nine gods and goddesses and the animals to be sacrificed to each. Çavuştepe, twenty-five kilometres from Van, is Sardurihinili, built by Sarduri II between 764 and 734 BC, its upper castle thirty metres above the lower. Hoşap Castle, on the Van–Başkale road, was rebuilt in 1643 and keeps its original west gate with a Persian inscription and lion reliefs.
Yedi Kilise, properly the monastery of Warak Wank, has five churches rather than the seven of its name. Its central church, dedicated to the Holy Mother of God, dates from 1003–1021, and the jamatun added in 1648, nine bays each under its own dome, keeps frescoes on its walls and piers. For the lake seen from above, the Kız Kalesi at Edremit, a hill held to have been an Urartian sacred site, now serves as a panoramic terrace over Lake Van; minibuses and buses towards Edremit run from central Van.
Çarpanak, Ayanis and Erçek
Akdamar is not the only island with a church. Çarpanak, uninhabited, lies in the lake north of the city; its monastery of St John, rebuilt in 1462, has a dome under a conical cap that recalls the Seljuk tomb towers and an entrance with muqarnas, which the provincial directorate presents as a rare meeting of medieval Christian and Muslim architecture. It is far less visited than Akdamar. On the shore, Ayanis Castle stands 225 metres above the lake and 300 metres back from it: the Urartian city of Rusa, abandoned after 645 BC.
Erçek, thirty kilometres east of Lake Van, comes second in size among the waters of the Van basin and is the one for birds. It is classed as an important bird area, and about half of Türkiye's 453 recorded bird species occur in its basin, flamingos among them. Its water is salty and strongly alkaline, with no native fish; pearl mullet brought from Lake Van between 1985 and 1992 never led to a lasting fishery.
Ahlat and Adilcevaz
Ahlat, on the north-western shore, is a town of tomb towers, and its Seljuk cemetery is described as the world's largest medieval Turkish-Islamic cemetery. About 8,200 gravestones stand across it, the tallest rising to 3.5 metres and carved on every face with geometric patterns, dragons, palmettes and lamps, and Christian and Yazidi graves have been found among the Muslim ones. It is on the UNESCO tentative list and works as an open-air museum.
The Usta Şakirt tower, also called the Ulu Kümbet, is the largest, standing close to the shore on a nine-metre square base of Ahlat's volcanic stone, with a conical cap carved in nine tiers. The Hasan Padişah tower, second in size, was raised for Hasan Aka, who ruled Ahlat, in the later thirteenth century, and is in good condition. The Çifte Kümbetler of 1280 each hold two named burials, and the twelve-sided Erzen Hatun tower is, in the directorate's words, the most richly decorated of them all. The Ahlat shore castle, rebuilt in 1556 on the orders of Suleiman the Magnificent by Zal Pasha and Mimar Sinan, has a triple iron gate on the lake side and the İskender Paşa Mosque of 1564–65 within its walls.
At Adilcevaz, the castle survives only as ruins on steep rock at the edge of the lake. Süphan Mountain, 4,058 metres and north of the lake, is the third-highest mountain in Türkiye. Climbs usually start from Aydınlar village on its easier eastern side and take eight to ten hours to the summit and back, and the climbing season runs from late June to mid-September; the summit looks down over Lake Van.
Nemrut and Bitlis
Nemrut is a dormant volcano whose last lava flow is dated to the fifteenth century, lying across the Tatvan, Ahlat and Güroymak districts. Five lakes lie in its caldera, at 2,247 metres; the largest is the biggest crater lake in Türkiye, and the provincial directorate adds that it is the second largest in the world. Hot springs at its edges are what remains of the volcano's activity. The area is a Ramsar wetland used for walking, cycling and riding, and visitors are asked not to go into the lake, light fires or leave rubbish. Bitlis, 32 kilometres from the caldera, has a castle whose walls run 2,800 metres along a rock between two streams, the İhlasiye medrese built by the Seljuks in 1216, and an ethnography museum in the former governor's residence.
