Adıyaman has housed sixteen different civilisations. It sits south of the south-eastern Taurus and west of the Zagros, north of the Persian Gulf, forming the upper edge of the land known for thousands of years as the Fertile Crescent, with Malatya to the north, Kahramanmaraş to the west, Gaziantep to the south-west, Şanlıurfa to the south-east and Diyarbakır to the east.
The province's great site is Mount Nemrut, the gift of the Commagene civilisation to humanity: the colossal statues of gods and kings on the summit draw visitors from all over the world. The mound tomb and its surroundings were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1987, and the area was declared a national park in 1988.
The recognition continued afterwards. In 2004 the site was awarded the Golden Apple, the prize given by FIJET, the international federation of travel writers and journalists, and treated as the Oscar of tourism.
