Eight rock tombs, three of them monumental, are cut into the face of a rock mass just south of the centre of Kastamonu, below the industrial vocational high school. Two of the monumental ones have two funerary couches each inside their chambers.
The one that gives the place its name, the Evkaya tomb, is the one to look for: a columned front, and on its pediment a depiction of the Potnia Theron, the mistress of the animals. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism dates them to the early seventh century BC, made under the influence of Phrygian culture, and describes them as built less as rock tombs than as an open-air sacred place of worship. They are on Sanat Okulu Caddesi in the Saraçlar quarter, reached by city minibus.
Getting there
- Access
- City dolmuş reach it.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Kastamonu as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -0.9 °C in January to 20.2 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in May (75 mm) and lightest in February (27 mm). Long-term means for 1930-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
