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Excavated stone foundations of the palace on the upper mound at Kültepe
Photo: Klaus-Peter Simon / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0, resized

Culture · Cappadocia · Kocasinan

Kültepe (Kanesh)

Kültepe Ören Yeri

The great mound of Kanesh north-east of Kayseri, a Bronze Age city whose merchants' quarter left the oldest written archive found in Anatolia.

  • Open now Closes 17:30 · last entry 17:15
  • Ticket Free
  • Visit ~45 min–1 h

Directions See it on the Cappadocia map

Build a day-by-day plan with closing-day warnings and ticket totals.

What to see

Around four thousand years ago Kanesh was a trading city at the meeting of roads across Anatolia, and Assyrian merchants from Assur had a settlement at the foot of the mound. Their clay tablets in cuneiform — letters, contracts and accounts by the thousand — are the earliest written documents from Anatolia. On site you see the excavated foundations of houses and large buildings; the finds are in museums, among them the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. The site has been on UNESCO's Tentative List since 2014.

Forty-five minutes to an hour.

Closed on Mondays. There is little shade on the mound.

Getting there

About 20 km north-east of Kayseri (Ministry figure), off the Sivas road near Karahöyük. From Göreme it is about 74 km in a straight line — a day trip by car from Cappadocia.

Transport lines are general directions, not checked against the operator's timetable.

Open in OpenStreetMap See it on the Cappadocia map

Nearby

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Also in this area

Straight-line distances.

Where to stay nearby

ilçemde shows no Ministry-licensed count for kayseri/kocasinan; its page still lists hotels and guesthouses in the district.

Hotels and guesthouses in kayseri/kocasinan ↗

Accommodation lists open on ilçemde, our sister directory of Turkish businesses (new tab). We do not take bookings or commissions.

Pharmacies on duty tonight in kayseri/kocasinan ↗ The list changes every day; on-duty pharmacies stay open when the others are closed.

About this page

Location: OpenStreetMap — Kültepe (way/13858887; Nominatim, 01.10.2026). Ticket, hours and closing days: only from the operator's own pages; anything we could not confirm there is marked “Not verified”. Last checked 30 Sep 2026.