Guide
The castle crowns the hill on which the old city of Niğde stood, in the middle of the modern town, and can be reached on foot.
When it was first built is not certain in either source. Traces in the foundation stones point to the eighth century BC, and the lower walls carry work in an Arab-Byzantine manner. A second phase of building, placed in the first half of the tenth century, is thought to have ringed the hill with three lines of wall.
The castle is made up of an outer castle and an inner castle enclosed by a thick wall. It grew in importance under the Anatolian Seljuks, in the reigns of Kılıçarslan II from 1155 to 1192, Rükneddin Süleyman Şah II from 1196 to 1204, and Alâeddin Keykubad I from 1220 to 1237. In the republican period it served as a prison.
It was repaired in the 1740s; the Ministry's culture portal names the grand vizier İshak Paşa as the man who had that work done.
Time has been uneven with it. The walls on the west have gone entirely, while repairs have been made on the south, and a short stretch of the walls facing the Sungurbey Mosque has been restored. The walls of the main tower are still standing, but the many rooms and cells inside it are wholly ruined. Two surviving bastions were kept by being turned into dwellings.
A clock tower of the nineteenth century, built on one of the western bastions, has become the emblem of Niğde.
The hill itself has been laid out as a park and walled around, and the municipality maintains it.
