Niğde

Niğde is a city in the Central Anatolia region of Turkey and the seat of both Niğde Province and Niğde District. Its registered population was 170,511 in 2022, and it lies at an elevation of about 1,276 metres. The town sits near several ancient trade routes, notably the road from Kayseri to the Cilician Gates and on to the Mediterranean coast, and the area has been settled over the centuries by Hittites, Assyrians, Greeks, Armenians, Romans, Byzantines and Turks. In the early Middle Ages it was known as Magida and was settled by the remaining inhabitants of nearby Tyana after that city fell to the Arabs in 708 or 709. Ottoman statistics from 1914 show a mixed population in the town, with large Muslim and Greek communities and smaller Armenian and Protestant ones, and the remains of two large stone churches still stand in the old Eski Saray quarter near the Sungur Bey Mosque. Later arrivals included Turks from Bulgaria and other Balkan countries who were settled here in the 1950s and 1960s. Today it is described as a small, green city with medieval monuments scattered around its market place, and it is a base for visitors to the Aladaglar and Bolkar mountains.