Guide
Kahramanmaraş Castle stands on an artificial mound in the centre of the city. It has been repaired many times, and is thought to have been built between the first century BC and the second century AD. The plan is close to a rectangle, 150 by 75 metres. The General Directorate of Antiquities and Museums has restored part of the walls and three towers, one of them the castle's old entrance structure.
That tower is square, with outer walls of cut stone and inner walls of rubble. More than half of the inner walls had fallen, and the inner gate corridor and the door jambs have been restored. On the south face of the tower is a pointed-arched double door whose wooden leaves are faced with thick sheet metal and riveted with large-headed nails; the east side carries arrow slits. Cross-shaped within, the tower opens into the castle through another door on the long arm of the cross.
The area inside the walls is laid out as a park, with open tea gardens, a children's playground and places to sit; old photographs of the city stand along the paths, and to the left of the entrance is a large figure of Atatürk, lit at night so that the whole city can see it.
At the foot of the road up to the castle stands the Acar bath, built for the use of the workmen during the years when the castle was being repaired under Süleyman the Magnificent; the inscription in front of it gives its date of construction as the sixteenth century.