Things to do
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Cathedral of the Holy Cross
The Armenian palatine church built between 915 and 921 on Akdamar island for the kings of Vaspurakan, in pink volcanic tuff, by the architect-monk Manuel. Its outer walls carry an extensive array of relief carving, mostly biblical scenes, among them Adam and Eve and the serpent in Eden. After a restoration completed in 2006 it reopened as a museum, and the island is reached by boat from the Gevaş shore.
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Lake Van
Turkey's largest lake, a saline soda lake at 1,640 metres with no outlet, so alkaline and salty that it usually stays unfrozen through winters that average below zero. Until 2018 only one fish, the pearl mullet, was known to live in it, and each May and June the shoals leave for the fresher river mouths to spawn, while the volcano of Mount Süphan dominates the northern shore.
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Muradiye Waterfall
A waterfall on the Bendimahi river about eight kilometres north of Muradiye, where the water drops eighteen metres at its centre over a hard basalt lip at the mouth of a narrow volcanic gorge. The eastern and western flanks fall fifteen or sixteen metres, which spreads it into a broad curtain. It is named after Sultan Murad IV, and in some winters it freezes into white terraces.
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Van Fortress
The Urartian citadel of Tushpa, cut into a limestone ridge above the old city, with royal rock tombs, a trilingual inscription of Xerxes and the ruins of the pre-1915 town below it. Sunset over the lake is the reason to climb it late.
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Çavuştepe
An Urartian fortress founded by King Sarduri II in the eighth century BC, strung along a ridge about twenty-five kilometres southeast of Van on the Hakkari road. The upper and lower sections hold the Temple of Khaldi, a palace, storehouses and cisterns, built of smoothly finished blocks that fit together without mortar, and four cuneiform inscriptions have been found among them.
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Hoşap Castle
A Kurdish chief's castle on a rock above the village of Hoşap, rebuilt in its present form in 1649 by Sarı Süleyman Bey of the Mahmudi tribe on older Armenian and Urartian foundations. The gate carries a Persian inscription and carved lions, and inside the walls are the remains of a mosque, baths, a cistern and dungeons. It lies some fifty kilometres from Van, on the Başkale road.
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Van Museum
The Urartu Museum moved in 2019 into a new single-storey building northeast of the citadel, after the old one was damaged in the 2011 earthquakes. Of some forty-five thousand objects, about two and a half thousand are on show, with nine of its twenty-three halls given to Urartu and the rest to Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk and Ottoman pieces. It is regarded as the richest Urartian collection anywhere.
