Tavium lies at Buyuknefes village, forty kilometres west of Yozgat. Hittite and Phrygian traces are found here, but the main settlement belongs to the Galatian period, between the third and first centuries BC. The city was founded by the Trokmi, the branch of the people the Romans called Galatians who came from the Balkans into Anatolia in the 280s BC, and it served as the capital and trading centre of the middle Kızılırmak region where the Trokmi lived.
Surveys have been carried out here since 1997. They have produced a large quantity of pottery, column bases and drums, grave stelae, an inscribed Byzantine grave and many architectural fragments, and have identified traces of occupation running from the Chalcolithic period through to the Islamic era.
Getting there
- Access
- Büyüknefes village is reached by road.
When to go
- Climate
- Across Yozgat as a whole, monthly mean temperatures run from -1.6 °C in January to 19.9 °C in August; the mean stays between 15 and 25 °C in June, July, August and September; rainfall is heaviest in December (75 mm) and lightest in August (11 mm). Long-term means for 1929-2025 from the Turkish State Meteorological Service (MGM).
