Ankara is Turkey? capital and the second largest city after Istanbul. Located in the center of Anatolia on the eastern edge of the great, high Anatolian Plateau, in the province of the same name, Ankara is a lovely tourist destination. Besides its cultural and architectural heritage, the city has a major European appearance than most of the other cities in Turkey, with wide-open roads, large hotels, restaurants and museums
Although during its history the city has not had much of transcendence in the ancient periods, was not until the War of the Independence, when Kemal Ataturk declared to Ankara as the capital of the new Republic of Turkey that Ankara got great importance. Today Ankara is an important commercial and industrial city and as center of the Turkish government, the city plays and important role for the Turkish economy as an important crossroad of trade.
As a tourism destination Ankara has many things to offer to visitors. There are Hittite, Phrygian, Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman archaeological sites like the Temple of Augustus and Rome (20 BC) which is also known as the Monumentum Ancyranum, that show the periods that the city has passed during the time. There are also beautiful museums displaying its cultural heritage and the life style of locals. |