Guide
Ünye Castle stands five kilometres south-east of the town of Ünye in Ordu, within the bounds of Kaleköy. It is also known as Çaleoğlu Castle.
The castle is thought to be some 2,500 years old and to have been used by the Pontic kingdom, the Romans, the Byzantines and the Ottomans. It is recorded as having served for a time as a retreat for monks. Local accounts hold that the Danishmend ruler Yağı Basan took it, and the name Çaleoğlu is thought to come from an Ottoman lord who held the castle.
The castle lies on the left of the Ünye–Niksar road at its seventh kilometre. One of its features is that much of it consists of a single rock. Rising on a slope that is hard to reach, the walls have come down to us largely sound, and because the place stands high above this country it was used as a fortified post in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
The entrance is on the south-east. The gate, made in the time of the Pontic king Mithridates II, stands five metres high. On this side, ten metres above the ground, is a rock tomb three metres wide and two metres high, with a carved eagle at each of the three points of its triangular pediment. Near the summit of the castle are two tunnels and a cistern.
In restoration and clearing work carried out in 2009 the walls whose stones had fallen were repaired, and tombs in the inner castle and further sarcophagi were found under the rubble. No archaeologists were present at that work, and it is recorded that the skeletons and bones taken out in order to clean the tombs were destroyed through unskilled handling.
Restoration began again in 2018 and turned up coins, pottery and cannonballs of various periods. A project was drawn up to let visitors see the great tunnel, 250 metres long, on a rail system.
