Palu Kalesi stands a kilometre east of the town, and its position is the whole story: the Murat river wraps around the south and southeast, and sheer rock closes the north and west. The district governorate gives it roughly three thousand years and notes that Evliya Çelebi recorded Timur seeing this castle and riding on without attempting to take it.
Many powers left marks here, but the Urartian work is what to look for, and it is unusually varied: an inscription, rock-cut tombs, rock tunnels, temples, water cisterns, worship niches, rock stairways and rock stores, a combination the governorate describes as rarely found together. Some sources also place the wedding of the Artuqid ruler Belek Gazi to the Seljuk lady Ayşe Hatun in this castle.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Elazığ as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -0.7 °C in January to 27.2 °C in July; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in May, June and September; rainfall is heaviest in April (63 mm) and lightest in August (2 mm). Long-term means for 1938-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
