Bayburt sits on the Çoruh at 1,550 metres, on the old Silk Road route between Erzurum and Trabzon that both Marco Polo and Evliya Çelebi travelled. Its landmark is Bayburt Castle, raised on bare rock on the north side of the town. The directorate notes that twenty Arabic inscriptions survive on its walls, and that its other name, Çinimaçin, came from purple and green turquoise tiles of which nothing is left today. On Şehit Osman hill, overlooking the town, stand two cone-roofed tombs that tradition attributes to the Saltukids of the 13th century; the Ulu Mosque is on the directorate's short list too.
Two museums bring visitors from well beyond the province. The Baksı Museum stands on a hill above the Çoruh valley in Bayraktar village, the former Baksı, 45 km outside the town. It was the idea of the Bayburt-born artist and teacher Hüsamettin Koçan, shows contemporary art next to folk painting and local handicrafts, and won the Council of Europe Museum Prize in 2014. The Kenan Yavuz Ethnography Museum at Beşpınar village in Demirözü is a whole rural complex — village houses, mills, a mansion, a village coffee house and an open-air museum of country life — and received the Silletto prize of the European Museum of the Year Award in 2021.
