Canca Kalesi sits on a rock west of Gümüşhane with a clear view over the country around. It runs east to west in three sections one behind the other, ringed by a wall 1.5 metres thick, and has two gateways.
You enter from the west into the lowest and smallest of the three areas, where a cistern of 4.20 by 4.10 metres is the thing to look at — plastered inside and out, complete but for its top, and now filled with rubble. A second gate leads east into the main part of the castle. In the north corner of that second level, set on the rock, are the remains of a small chapel of 4.20 by 3 metres with a single apse pierced by a slit window; its west and north walls have fallen, but the entrance was clearly on the west. At the eastern end of the castle, again on the rock, stands a watchtower of 4.90 by 4.10 metres. Its north side is gone, but the beam sockets left in the walls show it had two floors.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Gümüşhane as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -1.7 °C in January to 20.3 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (70 mm) and lightest in August (14 mm). Long-term means for 1961-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
